Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the AUB Group FY23 results. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Mike Emmett, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Good morning, welcome. Mark and I are delighted you can join us, and we're pleased to share the results of a very strong FY23 performance for AUB Group. It's been a busy year with multiple strategic imperatives. Our progress is a testament to the AUB team's ability to execute well and deliver the intended benefits. The results are compelling, and they're summarized on slide 2. The first point I want to make is that every single business area has delivered revenue growth and margin expansion, and as a result, we're upgrading our earnings potential with strong momentum across the business, enabling us to upgrade our medium-term margin targets. A few key highlights: firstly, underlying EPS increased by 33.7% to AUD 1.293 per share. The agencies are on track, our strategy is delivering, and the scale-up is now ahead of schedule.
FY23 was particularly important for Strata, with the acquisition of SUU. The turnaround in New Zealand is ahead of expectations. This has partly been enabled by the acquisition of ICIB, however, the strong turnaround has taken place much quicker than forecast. In Australia, a plethora of portfolio optimization activities has allowed us to refine the portfolio and enable improved performance. Bizcover's mid-term margin target has already been exceeded. The business continues to grow and evolve, with platform scalability benefits becoming increasingly evident. Finally, Tysers is outperforming. We completed the acquisition, and we're now making great progress to implement synergies and deliver efficiencies in that business. We anticipate FY24 will be another year of strong growth, our expectation is to achieve an underlying net profit after tax in the range of $154 million-$164 million.
This representing growth of 19.3%-27% versus FY23. In determining this guidance range, we've adopted our traditional approach of factoring in the recent performance in each business area, together with the expected impact of acquisitions, both those made in FY23 as well as known M&A activity in FY24. Moving to Slide 4, which summarizes the financial highlights for the group in FY23. Our underlying revenue grew by 61.2% to AUD 1.11 billion, while the underlying net profit after tax grew by 74.4% to AUD 129.1 million. As mentioned, the underlying EPS grew by 33.7% on the prior year, and the board has proposed a fully franked final dividend of AUD 0.47 per share.
Slide 5 shows the growth components of the underlying profit after tax. I'd like to highlight the excellent organic growth of 12.3%. This was complemented by acquisition growth. Excluding Tysers, this was 17.2%, with a further 44.9% net growth from the Tysers acquisition. This after allowing for increased net cost of funding. I'll now hand over to Mark to talk about shareholder returns.
Thank you, Mike. Good morning, everybody. The top graph on slide 6 shows the pleasing EPS growth over the past 3 years of 22% in FY21, 12.3% in FY22, and now 33.7% in FY23. Given this strong uplift in EPS, the board has proposed an increase in the final dividend of 23.7% to AUD 0.47 per share, resulting in a full year dividend for FY23 of AUD 0.64 per share. For FY23, an additional metric, the 3-year average Return on Invested Capital, was added to the AUB Group long-term incentive scheme. Therefore, we have included this metric for FY23 and the prior 2 years to assist investors.
Note that each of these percentages represents the three-year average Return on Invested Capital ending in that year, with the three-year average Return on Invested Capital for 2023 at 12.6%. It is encouraging to see we are delivering a rising Return on Capital Invested. Slide seven shows that the underlying NPAT fully converted to cash for both FY22 and FY23. Slide eight shows our funding position. On the left-hand side of slide eight, you'll note the status of what we've highlighted in previous years, namely, that the group is relatively insulated against interest rate movements. This is because the value of look-through interest-earning cash, which was AUD 981 million at June 2023, exceeds the value of look-through debt, which was AUD 585 million.
We've also included key metrics about our debt position on the right-hand side of the Slide. You'll note that the net debt position has reduced from AUD 690 million on December 31, 2022 to AUD 474 million on June 30, 2023. The leverage ratio has reduced to 1.71 at June 30, 2023, while the value of cash and undrawn debt on that date was AUD 256.8 million, allowing substantial headroom for future acquisition activity. On Slide 9, we graphically depict the mix of currencies used for Tysers' revenue and expenses, and hence, the potential for Forex exposure. You'll note that most of the Tysers' Forex risk relates to a mismatch between Tysers' income earned in U.S. dollars, required to pay expenses incurred in British pounds.
To mitigate this risk, during FY23, we entered into a multi-year series of monthly forward contracts to sell U.S. dollars for British pounds for approximately 65% of Tysers' forecast U.S. dollar income. AUB also has an additional Forex risk, namely the translation risk to Tysers' profits arising from the movement between British pounds and Australian dollars. We are currently considering this. I'll now hand back to Mike.
Thanks, Mike. At the start of each year, we develop a set of execution priorities, and these are listed on slide 10. While I'll speak to each of these more specifically later in the context of the divisional results, I did want to highlight that FY23 was another strong year of delivering against our priorities. Slide 11. This highlights progress with our ESG ambitions. Our natural and inherent strength relates to the governance pillar. As an organization, we are good at recognizing risks, finding a balanced approach to measuring and managing them, and then taking action to govern and mitigate these risks. We were pleased, during FY23, to be once again accredited as a Great Place to Work and also to maintain an AA rating for our ESG initiatives from MSCI.
Our business model, which entails significant distributed ownership and partnership with hundreds of operating shareholders, works well precisely because we allow for differences in culture, processes, work styles, and ambitions in each of these many de- businesses. Our focus is, therefore, on critical items. In the social area, our partners are particularly strong. Our gender diversity in most businesses and at most levels is excellent. However, we have a gender issue at senior levels, which we are working on. The teams across our businesses and geographies are passionate about workplace giving and supporting those in need. While we have adopted some corporate platforms, such as the Do Good, Be Better donation matching program for head office and agency staff, every one of our businesses has an active involvement in charitable giving and a focus on diversity and equality in each workplace. Slide 13.
We now move to a more detailed discussion about each division. A snapshot of the performance is shown on this slide. I will confess that for several years, I've been driving to be able to report all segments on this slide as a bright, shining green. Earlier, when I said that we've seen very strong performance across all areas of the group, hopefully, you can see this evidenced on this slide. Revenue in different divisions has ranged in growth from 13.7% to 34.3%, while an expansion in margins across the divisions of somewhere between 140 basis points and 290 basis points, together with increases in profit before tax attributable to AUB shareholders for each division, has ranged between 18.9% and a somewhat spectacular 59.4%.
We're very proud to report these results to you, and I can only express great pleasure and appreciation and acknowledge each of our teams for a phenomenal set of results. Going forward, we will remove the ex-Tysers column and include Tysers as our 5th division from FY24, as we'll then have comparatives for Tysers. Slide 14. The text at the bottom of this slide highlights another very active year in Australian broking, as we continue to optimize our portfolio. Three acquisitions, four equity step-ups, six equity step-downs, five divestments, and two portfolio consolidations, together with several other restructures, indicate the ongoing opportunity to optimize the broking portfolio and deliver consequential margin expansion. The two graphs on this slide show our track record of growing revenue while also expanding margins strongly, a trend we plan to continue for many years to come.
The quality of our broking portfolio precludes me from listing individual businesses, as the performance during FY23 from so many has been exceptional. I would like to thank our broking partners and network members who are inspirational in how they lead and grow these businesses. Moving to slide 15. FY23 has been another good year for Bizcover, delivering further margin improvement as the platform scales. In FY23, Bizcover actually exceeded AUB's medium-term margin target for this business of 40%. We've seen margin expansion take place both in Australia, where Bizcover is far more developed, as well as the early stage international markets, where Bizcover is still in its infancy.
In addition to the strong financial performance, Bizcover continues to operate with a market-leading NPS of +71, while also continually adding new insurers and products to the platform, thereby enhancing the platform's future growth potential. Moving to slide 16. In early FY21, we communicated our strategy to build the agency division to AUD 1 billion of premium within 5 years, and this would be split across 3 areas of general commercial, specialty, and Strata. Less than 3 years into this journey, and the agency premium has very nearly reached this goal already, exceeding AUD 900 million in premium during FY23. During that year, agency revenue grew by 34.3%, the margin expanded by a further 140 basis points, and EBIT grew by 39.5%. In recognizing this performance, I'd like to particularly call out a few of the businesses.
The SUU team, which has been a fantastic addition to the AUB family, the 360 Group, which continues to fly, while a number of our specialty agencies are performing very well, particularly SURA Construction, Professional Risks, and Technology Risks. We also have some exciting new or expanded agencies, and I look forward to calling these out during FY24. Slide 17 reflects probably our most pleasing outcome for the year. The pace at which the New Zealand operation has responded to changes made during FY23 has been nothing short of extraordinary. The addition of the ICIB leadership team, merged with our BWRS legacy business, has been profound. This, combined with the ongoing quality of the various broking businesses and our network business in New Zealand, has resulted in excellent performance. Organic growth of 42.5% is complemented by acquisition growth of 17.9%.
The further 17.9% benefit shown from New Zealand group funding cost improvements was a result of a restructure of the New Zealand debt facilities and intercompany loans, and primarily changing how this item is reported. You should not give too much weight to this item on the slide. The only wrinkle in the New Zealand performance has been with Lola, our new broking technology platform. Although we have achieved some key milestones by integrating Lola with our 3 primary insurance partners and implementing the system at 2 pilot branches, the system has not met the specifications required for sign-off, we are working with the system vendor to remediate these items. This does, however, mean that system rollout will be somewhat delayed until the issues are rectified.
We continue to assume a net neutral financial impact from Lola costs in FY24, although this will now arise from lower expenditure, offset by lower revenue benefits. Slide 18 reflects several elements of Tysers' performance after the 9 months of AUB ownership. Tysers' EBIT margin strengthened to 26.1% over the course of the 9 months. This is a pleasing result and compares favorably with the circa 20% normalized underlying margin we announced as part of the acquisition announcement in May 2022, and is ahead of our internal forecasts for the 9 months of 23.7%. On the right-hand side of the slide, an analysis of revenue shows that 76% of income was from the wholesale part of the business, and of that, 70% of the wholesale income originated from North America, the UK, and Europe.
While only 2% of the income originates from Australia and New Zealand, this is obviously an area where we envisage significant growth prospects. This mix of geographic revenue sources leads to a more complex Forex management requirement. The foreign exchange impacts are summarized in the 2 tables on the left-hand side. The top table indicates the benefits from tailwinds arising from the depreciation of the Aussie dollar against sterling. The Tysers' EBIT reported in AUD increased by AUD 4.5 million, while the EBIT of AUD 78.7 million was AUD 9.2 million higher than the original AUB forecast developed at the time of the acquisition. The second table indicates the benefit of the USD hedging program implemented by AUB during FY23.
As Mark mentioned, the hedging program comprises monthly forward cover contracts for the sale of USD for sterling and runs until October 2025. During FY23, the hedging program generated GBP 2.9 million of benefit, according to this table. The various business units in Tysers continue to perform well. Marine is performing exceptionally, while non-marine has picked up in several key areas to mitigate the reduced income in several international jurisdictions that we have mentioned previously. I'd call out entertainment and contingency, which is well ahead of plan, while retail continues to perform nicely. As we focus on the opportunities to replicate AUB's broking success in Australia and replicate this in the SME and mid-market segments of the UK. Andrew Kendrick is a welcome addition to the AUB Group board and to the Tysers board as Chair.
Andrew is a recognized and experienced London insurance executive, and his experience and energy will be of great value as we progress with our London and wholesale ambitions. Over the past few weeks, we've announced the launch of Tysers Live, a global business unit focused on servicing the insurance needs of the sports, entertainment, film, and television industries. This combines multiple teams in Tysers and strengthens our ability to support global clients in these industries. We anticipate this change and this focus will accelerate the momentum we are currently enjoying in entertainment and contingency. On slide 19, we reflect progress during FY23 with the implementation of synergies and efficiencies in Tysers. You'll recall, at the time of acquisition, we communicated overall cost and revenue synergy targets of AUD 25 million per annum.
AUD 15 million of this target was attributable to cost synergies and efficiencies, while a further synergy target of AUD 10 million was attributed to the potential for increased income. On the cost side, during FY23, we've achieved AUD 2.9 million of savings, which will deliver annual run rate savings of AUD 7.6 million going forward. On slide 19, we reflect progress during FY23 with the implementation of synergies and efficiencies in Tysers. At the time of acquisition, we communicated overall cost and revenue synergy targets of AUD 25 million per annum. AUD 15 million of this target was attributed to cost synergies and efficiencies. During FY23, we've achieved AUD 2.9 million of cost savings, which will deliver annual run rate savings of AUD 7.6 million going forward.
A further synergy target of AUD 10 million was attributed to the potential for increased income, arising largely from the placement of individual risks and binders by members of the AUB network. During the latter stages of FY23, Tysers earned AUD 0.4 million of income from AUB brokers' placements of risks, totaling AUD 2.5 million in client premium. In addition, we've earned a net incremental income of AUD 2.6 million from the investment of Tysers' cash funds. Note that this normalizes the impact of market rate rises and reflects the benefits of a different and more disciplined approach to investment adopted by AUB. We are confident about achieving the revenue and cost synergy targets during FY24. Already in early FY24, four binders have been placed by Tysers for AUB agencies.
The total premium of AUD 90 million for these binders has resulted in increased capacity and additional insurers for the agencies. For the cost synergies, we have already implemented actions that deliver more than 50% of the annual savings target, while various additional cost actions have been identified for implementation to deliver the balance of the cost target on a run rate basis during FY24. Slide 21 reflects the margin expansion achieved in each division during FY23, as well as the medium-term margin targets. Given the strong momentum across the business and the great progress made over the past few years, we've taken the opportunity to revisit the targets and have increased these for four of our five divisions.
The targets for Australian Broking, New Zealand, and Tysers have been increased by 2% each, while the target for Bizcover has been increased by 10% to a new target of 50%. The target for agencies has been left unchanged. The matrix shown on slide 22 reflects how the operating model for AUB Group will evolve over the coming few years. We anticipate in future to coordinate the business across 3 global divisions: retail broking, wholesale broking, and agencies. As a consequence, we will seek to appoint key leaders to each of these roles over the coming 12-18 months. When we acquired Tysers, Clive Buesnel and I agreed that he would assist with the transition to AUB ownership and deliver a set of key outcomes.
Given the excellent progress that we've made with this transition, Clive and I have agreed that he'll step down as Tysers CEO and leave the business at the end of this month. With effect from 1 September, I shall, subject to regulatory approval, take up the role on an interim basis, with the intention to appoint a new global head of wholesale broking based in the UK during FY24. I'd like to thank Clive for the tremendous support and assistance he has provided me and AUB since our first engagement about Tysers. On slide 23, we show the forecast underlying net profit after tax range for FY24 of AUD 154 million-AUD 164 million. This representing growth of 19.3%-27% as compared with FY23.
This represents strong growth across all parts of the group and a continued focus on delivering synergy benefits in Tysers. The profit contribution from acquisition activity of 3.9% aligns with our traditional approach to include only those M&A activities that are already executed or are known with very high certainty. I'd now like to hand back to the moderator for questions. Thank you.
One on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Tim Lawson with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, gentlemen. Just a couple of quick questions. In terms of, in the agency business, you're obviously quite close to that original target. I seem to allude in the slides that maybe that's something you can raise. I mean, what do you need to do to get that through that AUD 1 billion, and what could margins do should you achieve that?
Yes, thanks, Tim. You know, as you, as you referenced, we have, the, the premium growth in agencies has been quicker than we expected. I think to get to where all three legs of the agencies operate at that 45% or so margin target, we need a, we need a, a few things. Firstly, we need balance. Our general commercial agency group has grown faster than the others, and then secondly, Strata. We need specialty to, to scale up. I think you'd see that actually, Strata and General Commercial are the higher of the, of the three margin, areas, and so now we need our specialty areas to expand as well. But broadly, it's really more of the same.
I mean, For those in our agencies listening to me, I don't want them to sound, you know, think this is not an ambitious and aspirational piece. I think we genuinely can reasonably set our sights on a much higher premium target over the next 3 to 5 years, so we're working on what should that number be. You know, I, I think the short answer is: to achieve the margin target, we need our specialty agencies to accelerate their growth in parallel with the growth we're already achieving in Strata and General Commercial.
Okay. Just a quick question on, on debt. You seem to go about AUD 50 million organic debt reduction. I mean, there's obviously some first half timing on, on dividends, but the potential to keep reducing debt and organic run rate, that sort of level versus sort of dividend increases.
I think, Tim, it's all about the balance of opportunities, right? I think the key thing is that at any point in time, we're evaluating acquisition opportunities, some of those are bolt-ons that, you know, optimize, particularly our broking pieces. I think the reality is, it's all about the opportunities in front of us and the best way to deploy capital. We're very conscious about generating strong returns for shareholders, but equally, the fact that, you know, in the medium to long term, what we're trying to do is invest the funds in a way that generates a return for shareholders.
Just final one for me. You obviously called out, the New Zealand, tech, and so just some sort of delay there. Can you just expand on the situation and, and what, sort of outcomes you're hoping to see?
Yeah, pretty much, you know, typical of standard practice in large technology projects. The good is that we've got it running and working and operating as the exclusive broker management system in 2 brokerages. They were identified as our 2 pilot sites, and the interface for all the personal lines products is live directly into the insurers. That's very good. Those are complex achievements, so that's tick and tick. However, some of the functionality in the system is not working the way. You know, when you, when you develop a system like that, you have pilot sign-off requirements, and you have user acceptance testing, and inevitably, at this stage of a project, it identifies issues around how the technology is performing, both from a systems performance as well as a user testing and functionality piece.
We've been working with the, with the, the software provider and partner to now, for them to address these issues before we're comfortable to sign off to move into official rollout phase, which is then when we, you know, roll out to it. It's, I guess it's really just it being explicit about where we are in the project, and I think our assumption is this is going to take a little bit longer than our original implementation plan suggested. Our, you know, as I referenced from a financial point of view, our assumption is a continued net neutral impact, simply because in FY24, we'll have lower costs because we're rolling out, you know, we're deferring the rollout, and we'll have lower revenue because we're deferring the rollout, and those will neutralize each other.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from Elizabeth Melitus, with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one's just on the AUB broking margin. Obviously, for the full year, it continued to expand, but just looking at the half year, the EBIT margin actually stepped back, and from what I can tell, it, revenue was still fairly robust at around 13%, but cost growth was actually fairly elevated, at around 15% versus 7% in the first half. Given that the majority of your costs are employee costs, and they typically, as far as I understand, locked in on at the start of the financial year, can you just sort of unpack that higher cost growth? Is that something we should continue to expect in the near term?
Yeah. Elizabeth, all right, firstly, I think the first half to second half, always difficult to compare. The reason is, candidly, a big part of... As you rightly say, our three biggest costs are people, premises, and insurance premium. On the people and insurance premium. T he costs, you know, a big part of what the people costs are relate to bonuses and performance incentives, et cetera, which we accrue. Although we accrue through the year, obviously, we assume a certain level of performance early in the year, and then, as, you know, not, not by design, but, you know, I think this recently would have been our tenth upgrade consecutively.
The business continuously is performing better than we forecast, which means obviously you end up with a back-end loaded set of assumptions around bonus provisions, which means that in June, now, you know, our remuneration costs are always higher than the rest of the year because of that assumption. Now, in some, some cases, we might have an over-accrual, not intentionally, but an over-accrual for, for bonuses, et cetera, which we then would reverse in the first quarter after the financial year. What you have in FY23 is sort of coincidentally a combination of these two things, where the FY22 bonus accrual was slightly more than we actually ended up paying, which means you had a net reversal, i.e., an understatement of cost in the first half.
Then, we've, you know, we believe we've got a robust bonus accrual at the end of FY23, which means that it looks half on half as if the costs are mismatched. The second piece is that we have, you know, our, our insurance premiums run from May to April, and so again, as the insurance costs go up, we, you know, we have some estimates around it, but, you know, there tends to be a normalization. Now, we do have a captive, so some of the accounting, as the analysts on the call will know better than I do, the accounting for the provisioning and the captive is quite complex, but nonetheless, we have a, you know, a well-funded, mature captive.
You know, some of the costs related to the insurance provisioning and the captive in, in the fourth quarter were quite material and more than the. You know, whereas in the first quarter, sorry, the first half, you wouldn't have that, you know, new part, new accident year provisioning. So broadly, I'd say what you should look at is that the margins for Australian Broking, and like I did read some of the early views, the margins are improving, not deteriorating. I think people are reading into something that doesn't exist. Probably as an aside, I would mention that I think we first published our margin targets in February 2022, 18 months later, and the. We said the targets were for the medium to long term. At the time, I was asked: "What does that mean?
I said, "3-5 years." 3-5 year target, margin target for Australian Broking was 35%. We've just exceeded that margin target after 18 months. The fact that we've upgraded that target twice now, now to 40, shows that we have great confidence about the future margin target improvement.
Okay, thank you. That, that color is really useful. Then just actually on your medium-term margin target for AU Broking, you know, like you said, you've, you've increased it from 35% to 38%, and now again to 40%. You know, that's well ahead of, you know, your larger competitors. That, you know, pretty strong number. How, how are you confident that you'll actually achieve those kinds of margins, and what do you need to do to get there?
Elizabeth, it is actually more of what we've been doing, right? I think, you know, some of this is all about, you know, so I suppose, you know, when we announce the margin target, remembering that from FY19, I think from memory, we've gone from a 25% margin in Australian Broking to a 35% margin target. At the time, if I'd said we're going to improve the target, you know, we're going to improve the margin by 10%, you know, a 1,000 basis point, I think people would have. Well, I wouldn't have thought it, to be honest.
I think part of this is about an evolving insight into just how powerful our combination of, you know, building and leveraging platform businesses in the consolidation piece, together with the deployment of Express Cover, together with the bolt-on acquisition strategy that we've had. And, you know, frankly, our network of businesses and our principals are incredibly good at running, you know, broking businesses. So, you know, as you build momentum, you realize, actually, we can go further and we can go harder. I use this very cheesy expression, which, you know, people ask me to comment on other people's margins and et cetera. The reality is, we're swimming in our lane, and we're concentrating on our stroke, and we can see, you know, we can see a, it's a plausible strategy to get to 40.
Now, when we said 35, we could see 35 in the three... I never dreamt we would achieve it in 18 months, right? I genuinely, that was never expected, but the business has just responded to the changes, far more quickly than we'd anticipated, and the strategy is delivering far more, you know, quickly than we expected.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from Olivier Coulon with E&P Financial Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, Mike, how are you doing?
Very good, thanks. You, Olivier?
Excellent. Just on the Tysers cost out, I seem to recall, and, and maybe I have this incorrect, I thought you were expecting to get to run rate cost out of 15 by the end of FY23, or was that not?
No.
Accurate? I suppose,
No, definitely not.
We
Definitely not, Olivier.
Yeah.
No. We, we are ahead on cost and on revenue.
And is the expectation that you get to the AUD 15 million run rate by FY24 now? Or is there any potential that, you know, that AUD 7.6 million ends-- well, that the, the AUD 15 ends up being exceeded from what you can tell?
Olivia, the problem with, I always think this is. Let's have a slightly philosophical argument. I think the fact is, at what point do synergies stop being synergies, and they simply become improving how you run and manage a business? Our practice is, we called out the synergies at the time of the acquisition. We're very confident in those. We'll deliver those, we'll report against that delivery, and then we'll move on. We're not going to upgrade the synergy opportunity. Do I think that there are greater medium-term opportunities? Well, that's reflected by the fact that we have upgraded the margin target for Tysers, right? I mean, you might recall that at the time of announcing the deal, we were challenged by people on whether the 19.9% normalized margin was a viable number.
You know, it's relatively, relatively soon since then that we're now sitting, you know, at a 26% margin. Now, I actually think the 26% is artificially slightly higher, 'cause their highest margin period is the 3rd quarter, and we don't have the 1st quarter in the FY23 numbers. If anything, the margin, apart from the synergy piece, will stay flat in Tysers in this next per-- as we get to a full year. For that point, you know, the fact is that, you know, we are very confident in the medium-term opportunity to uplift the, the margin in Tysers. Some of that is part of what we're calling synergies and what we called out as synergies, and some of it will just be just like the rest of AUB, you know, opportunities for us to scale and leverage the business differently.
Olivia, just to add to that, and just to answer your question, I mean, the AUD 7.6 million run rate saving, that's an annualization of what's already been done. There's, you know, we've got the rest of this year, financial year to June 2024, to get to the AUD 15 million target that, that was set in the beginning.
Okay. No, perfect. Just on M&A, in terms of, you know, you've obviously given the benefit, I think, you know, AUD 5 million, there's a drag from businesses that were sold through FY23. H-how much of the 5, on the positive side is FY23 acquisitions annualizing? How much is, you know, acquisitions that have either been already undertaken in FY24 or that are, you know, strongly expected to be undertaken in FY24?
Um.
In terms of dollar amount, I suppose?
We're not going to give you the explicit dollar amount, Olivia. What you should assume is that the numbers in there have such high confidence, you could assume that they're done, I think is the key point.
Yeah. Okay. It'd, it'd be probably safe to say that there's a decent chance that throughout the year you'll be increasing that?
Yeah, you would've, you would've thought so.
And look.
Gross number.
The reality is, if you go back over time, you know, over the last 4 years, every year, we buy more and there is more acquisition profit that is attributable to acquisitions than we declared at the beginning. I don't think you can factor in the unknown, right? For us, this is a very serious matter to try and provide guidance and forecast. Equally, every year, our organic growth has been higher than the outlook. That doesn't mean that we therefore, you should just take the average outperformance each year and add it to the number. We take this guidance setting very seriously, and it's based on bottom-up budgets. Clearly, there are opportunities for us to outperform, but clearly. That's why there's a range. There are clearly downside risks as well.
I think, you know, this is a high confidence acquisition number based on things we know that, well, candidly, we have completed, right? You know, but for you know, some formality, they're completed.
Yeah.
Rather than.
Okay.
Eery, every year we buy X, and therefore, let's assume this year we're going to buy the same. You know, we don't apply that type of approach to, to forecasting.
Yeah. Perfect. Thanks. Just a last question from me. Just Tysers Live, so it, you know, I may have missed it, but obviously you already have a strong, contingent business. What precisely is this initiative doing over and above that?
Yeah. So we had, we had entertainment producers and brokers and staff split between retail and contingency and then, you know, some international offices, et cetera, all operating in different teams, effectively. What we've done is we've pulled all of that together into one global business unit with a single global MD, who is, you know, leading that business. As a consequence, it'll provide us a more seamless approach to how we go after, you know, frankly, what our global clients, so they're not dealing with multiple different teams or people, et cetera. It also is a state of intent about us expanding that. You know, it's perfectly plausible that we will expand our teams and capabilities in different geographies as part of that.
Okay. Perfect. Thanks.
Just to be explicit, so the cost synergies, the target we set for on a run rate basis was December 2023.
Right. Okay. Yeah, I might may have, misread that. Appreciate that.
Okay.
Your next question comes from Andrei Stadnik with EMS. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Congratulations on a, a good finished rate result. Can I ask, just initially around the EBITDA margin targets? You shifted them up by around 2 percentage points or better. What, what's driving that? Like, is that tied into the new operating model that you're talking about?
No, it's not to do with the operating model, Andrei Stadnik. It's literally just, you know, we've achieved the margin targets we'd set, you know, 18 months ago, quicker than we'd expected, and we can see still more runway to improve further. It's really a function of just an update to some of our reviews. You know, it's perfectly plausible that, you know, For example, we could have achieved the 40% target for Bizcover and determined that actually that is the terminal margin, right? If we, when we did this exercise, now, as it turns out, that's not what we concluded, but I, I think it's just good practice for us to be. Now, I don't intend to update them every six months.
I don't think that's healthy for anybody, but the fact is, you know, we can see a lot more runway, and so we're really just, you know, adding to those terminal margin targets.
Thank you. Can we ask for, like, your view on what you've seen around the actual premium pricing dynamics, around your group?
Yeah, answering that outside of Australia and New Zealand is hard because we still don't have... You know, I think there are too many moving parts in the, in the London Market in terms of, you know, things that interplay in terms of currency and, commodity prices and, you know, you know, supply and demand in terms of, I don't know, shipping, et cetera, et cetera, as well as, you know, risk rates. I think there are too many variables there. In Australia and New Zealand, we're seeing about 7.5% rate in Australia, and we're seeing about 9.5% rate in New Zealand.
Thank you.
Okay.
Your next question comes from Siddharth Parameswaran with J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. A couple of questions, if I can. Firstly, just on Bizcover. It seems like there's a material improvement in the second half. I think in the first half, from memory, I think you were planning that, you know, pulling back on potentially some, some international expansion. I think that from memory, there were some concerns around rising costs of distributing on platforms. I just wonder if you could comment on current conditions now and also, you know, just what's behind some of the increased targets that you have on a medium-term basis for the first division?
Well, I think, two separate things. I think the increased margin target is fundamentally a function of the platform scalability benefits we get in Australia and the increasing scale in New Zealand. I think those two things, but particularly, you know, the Australian portfolio is now very large. You've got this high retention benefit of existing customers, and you've got still continued strong new business growth from new customers. Of course, that just adds to this portfolio of customers that renew, and then, the lifetime value, a big cost for, you know, Bizcover's two big costs are marketing or, you know, customer acquisition and technology.
Those two pieces, if you can, if you've got a larger and larger portfolio, or let's call it a, you know, sort of a, you know, an existing portfolio that's renewing, your marketing cost and cost of acquisition is quite low on that. Over time, as the portfolio enhances and enlarges, you simply have improved margins unless you're going after massive increases in new business growth. So that's really the phenomenon in Australia, and that, that follows through in the other markets. As New Zealand, you'll see the international margins on the slide have also improved. Nowhere close to what the margins are in Australia, but the fact is that as they scale up, you get the benefits of the economies, and therefore, more of that new business, new, the renewal business flows through to the bottom line.
So, you know, it is has all the benefits of a platform business, and as a consequence, you know, generally, you know, if you, if you can scale it up, the margin, margins improve. So again, just like my commentary on Australian Broking, you know, we didn't anticipate 18 months ago that Bizcover would get to this point as quickly as it has, and actually, their ability to moderate marketing spend has been quite impressive in the second half. That's actually not been them dialing back marketing spend, that's been them maintaining marketing spend while continuing to grow, and therefore, more of the revenue flows through as margin.
Sorry, just I'll ask just about conditions as well. I think there's been you know, I think you were a bit more, a bit more cautious on conditions six months ago around just what was happening on the aggregator channels and things like that. I was just wondering if you could just comment on those conditions, whether they've changed?
I guess, you know, what you'll recall I referenced is that the cost of acquisition in the aggregator channels was the highest. Ironically, as although the revenue top line growth is slower than it was a few years ago, the margin has improved because you've almost reduced your dependence on the scale of the high cost of acquisition type channels, and replaced it with growth out of the lower cost, higher margin channels. In a way, although, you know, you, you'd always take extra revenue at even at a lower margin percentage. The fact is that, you know, that's partly helping the margin improvement story as well as they grow through their direct channels.
Obviously, although, they, you know, sharing the income with the, with the intermediaries, as they, you know, the customer acquisition costs through intermediated channels like, you know, Australian Broking, you know, Aus Brokers, is much lower as well than through, those aggregator-type, channels.
Hmm. Okay, fair enough. Thank you. Just a second, second question for me. Just on the interest rates and how they're impacting some of your businesses and, and targets, I'm, I'm just wondering, are they, if we move to a lower interest rate environment, would that in any way change your, your targets? If the cash rate was to fall from here, would that in any way change these targets and the division targets?
In terms of the margin target? Well, it wouldn't change them.
Yeah.
I mean, it would slow our pace to get there, but no, it wouldn't change them. Obviously, at a group level, you know, the cost of debt is higher than the cost we get. So at that core, you know, net, you know, that one page that Mark spoke to, on that roughly AUD 500 million of debt, obviously the cost of that is much higher than the equivalent return we get on an equivalent AUD 500 million invested. So from a group point of view, ultimately, depending on the mix, while we insulate it to increases in interest rates, there is still a benefit to lower interest rates, on the core debt.
Yeah. Now, I sort of. The reason for asking the question is, if I look through the divisions, it looks like roughly most divisions, it's the interest component is, is, is adding an extra, let's say, 7-8% to your EBIT margins, just off the fact that we're in a higher interest rate environment. Just wondering if that is, if, if I'm interpreting that correctly or if there's anything else that, you know, I'm missing.
It's definitely increasing. The 7%-8% sounds too high. We'll come back to you separately, sir.
Okay. Yeah, I just took your interest cost, the interest revenue, and divided by your EBIT, so yeah. Okay. Just a final question, maybe just on just the acquisition multiples that are out there at the moment. I'm just keen to understand, if you could help us understand if they're rising, falling. We've seen quite a lot of transactions recently. Some of them are quite large, just the ones that you're looking at, what, what, how are the multiples?
Well, I mean, same thing. You know, most of our acquisitions are in that sort of small to medium size. They, you know, we still see the average of between 7.5 to 9.5, depending. I mean, obviously, the key factors are: How big is the business? How quickly is it growing? What margin does it operate at? Are you buying control or not? I think those are the key factors in a broking business. 7.5-9.5 times is the, is the range, depending on those, those factors. I read with intrigue some of the press about some of these business multiples, et cetera. I can understand for very big ones. Look, we've never paid...
You know, if you put Bizcover to one side, we've never paid above 12, I don't think. I think, you know, the reality is, is that we're not seeing that manifest itself in the transactions that we are involved with. Certainly you, you read the same press I do in terms of, you know, some of these lofty multiples for some of the big, you know, big runner process ones. Most of the time, we're looking at businesses that we are, you know, wanting to partner with in the medium to long term, and we're buying them at what we think are fair prices for us and for the seller.
Yep. Great. Thank you so much.
Okay.
Your next question comes from Jason Palmer with Taylor Collison. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. My question, thanks. Just in terms of the agency binders, Mike, the renewals with Tysers, it appears you're being quite modest in terms of the extra capacity you've been able to get there. Are you able to maybe brag a little bit more, if you could please, to use a term, on the benefits that's providing your specialty agencies?
Yeah. Well, Jason, I suppose the first point is it's very early on, but 3, 3, 3 factors I'll share that I don't really brag, I don't think, but anyway, let's, let's, let's, let's adopt that term. The first one is that the 3 binders that we've, you know, renewed. Remembering we had an exclusive arrangement with another partner for our SURA branded agencies until 1 July. In the roughly 7 weeks since then, well, we didn't have any binders that renewed in July, frankly. The ones that renewed in August, we have placed AUD 90 million worth of premium. Now, the old binder value of those was AUD 80 million, the, the capacity increase was roughly 10 on 80. That's the, the, you know, the first piece.
For me, that's not so much about bragging, it's about proving. When we said that there was a, you know, a, a, prize of somewhere between AUD 130 million and AUD 140 million of binders that could be placed through Tysers, that's evidence that in, you know, a three-week time frame, effectively, we've, we've placed, you know, 70% of that number. So that's more a proof point. That's the first thing. I think the second one, though, is that we have got some binders, where what we've been able to do is actually increase either the product or add a new risk class to the binder with Tysers assistance, or we've been able to bring new insurers onto the binder, which reduces the risk of the binder.
Because if you've got 1 insurer on a binder, and they change their mind about their risk capacity or their risk appetite about a particular geography or a pricing view, you're very beholden to the, you know, the, the, you know, the, the sort of foibles of that 1 insurer. If you have 5 insurers on a binder, you have a much less beholden on them, and replacing a 20% line on a binder is much easier than a 100% line. Having more insurers signed up to binder terms, et cetera, genuinely works well for the agency. On the binders that we've got a few new binders that we are, you know, launching with Tysers assistance. We've got existing capacity that we've placed. It's increased the capacity, it's increased.
For example, the one binder is a technology risk binder for sure technology risks. That has a new product or risk line that's been added to it, and we have two new insurers on one of the binders that we've renewed. It's, it's sort of all of those, Jason. Hopefully, those are the, the points that you, you were interested in.
Yeah. No, that's, that's wonderful. Thank you.
I'm sorry. I've just been corrected by my autocue, which says that it's AUD 20 million increased capacity on the 3 binders, not 10. Sorry about that.
Okay, thank you for that. So how far through in terms of the initial AUD 130-AUD 170 are you? I mean, it sounds like you're very early days, and those expectations around the revenue synergies.
Yes.
You know, could be quite light.
Well, the reality is, is that, you know, we are in month one of an 11-month, you know, portfolio. The things that are... The positives I point to, so you might recall, we said AUD 200 million and 5% commission gives you AUD 10 million of revenue, and it would start in July. We had AUD 2.5 million, AUD 400,000 of income already in the fourth quarter. That's 18% commission. Okay, so 3.5 times the estimate on some of it. We've had AUD 90 million of. You might recall that out of the AUD 200 million, I said roughly two-thirds binders and one-third direct risks or other facilities for brokers. On the direct risks, the income percentage is much higher than our assumption.
On the binders, we're already AUD 90 million of, I don't know, 2/3, so say AUD 140 million. AUD 90 million of AUD 140 million. We really just need a couple more binders, and the binder job for the year is done. We also have... What's been interesting for us is there have been some of that AUD 2.5 million is net new business for Aus Brokers. This is not business that we've moved from one wholesaler to Tysers. This is actually new business that AUB has never been able to win before, place before. Although we're getting 18% income into Tysers, we're also getting some other income for the brokers in Australia. All in all, I'm very enthusiastic about the size of the price.
I'm very confident about our AUD 10 million income synergy target.
Yeah. Thanks, Mike. It sounds like you've, you know, compared to where you, you thought you would be, you're sort of ticking boxes over and above along the way. Just in terms of the core debt, what sort of. Now, you've done the placement and the core debt has come down. Obviously, you've talked to how you're sort of out of money with the current interest rate rises because of the cost of the core debt. What mechanisms do you have to now do to kind of bring the margin down on that?
Well, the short answer is we need to renegotiate. Obviously, at some point, there's an opportunity for us to renegotiate our facility. You know, as you point out, Jason, it is, it is an expensive facility. The margins are higher than we believe we could source in the market if we were doing that now. You know, clearly, that's something we'll be exploring.
Okay. Thank you. Just the last question, if I, if I could, please. Just in terms of the Project Lola, I think you might have spent AUD 4 million-AUD 5 million this year, correct me if I'm wrong, please, PBT, in the New Zealand numbers, and I think you were saying you think you'll be net neutral in FY24. Does that mean there's AUD 4 million-AUD 5 million of savings after those revenues to come through in FY24, or does that mean that that spend still maintains that run rate?
No, it means the spend will dial back a lot, and we will have some income increase flowing through from the two brokers that are live. Also, we're obviously assuming further rollout later in the year. It's really just that it's, it's delayed.
Okay. Thanks so much for your time.
Absolute pleasure.
Your next question comes from Scott Hudson with MST. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, gentlemen. Just a couple of questions. I guess, in terms of your comments around the UK retail landscape, would you be deploying capital to expand your footprint in that channel?
Probably, Scott. I think, again, you know, the, the reality is, is that our tactic and strategy will be the same, right? I'd almost reference the New Zealand market. The way we've expanded in New Zealand has really been around, let's make sure that we have a network that delivers services to members, let's take our scale and put it into that network so that both our equity businesses and the network benefit from that scale. Let's look at ways in which we can invest in either other members, existing members of that network, or bring new equity businesses in.
Do it in a way that we're bringing synergies so that whatever investment we're making, the synergies mean that the multiples are acceptable and the cost of the investment and the return is within our normal sort of profile.
Okay, thank you. Then the, I guess, the uplift to the Tysers' medium-term margin targets, how much of that would be, I guess, maintaining ownership of the retail business, and how much of that is sort of, I guess, uplifting your general expectations for the wholesale business?
Look, there's a little bit about maintaining the retail business or, you know, retaining the retail business. Then there's a bit which is about. Look, candidly, I think the improvements in Tysers are slight. You know, they, they are gathering momentum faster than we'd anticipated. I think some of this is about pace. If you said to me, are we now talking about a terminal margin that's higher than what we actually internally thought? No. We, we were just being discreet about sharing that externally. We've always had quite a lot of confidence about this sort of margin or better. It's just that, you know, it's, the improvements are flowing through more quickly than we'd anticipated.
Thanks. Last one for me. I guess, Express Cover, is the volume of business going through that, helping push your medium-term margin target higher?
It is. Although the margin, the volumes... The margins are good, the volumes are still not, not exciting. The nice thing of coming off small bases is, you know, the volumes increased by, I don't know, 50% a year or something in terms of the volume growth. The growth is nice, but still, in absolute terms, it's still a very small part of our portfolio. I guess the optimist in me says, "Well, that's fantastic, because we're going really well. It's growing 50% a year, and if that gives us a steady tailwind for the next 10 years, whoop-de-doo!
Okay. That's all I have for now. Thank you.
Okay.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Mike Emmett for closing remarks.
Thank you very much. Firstly, thank you very much for joining us. As you can, you know, you can tell from the presentation, we're really delighted with the, with the results. I just want to thank our teams everywhere. I mean, literally, there isn't a single business that hasn't improved and beaten all of the forecasts and the targets we set for them at the beginning of the year, or even as recently as the, as the, the half year results. So, you know, that's an extraordinary performance, and so I just want to thank our teams. It is hard out there. The fact is that insurers and the combination of losses they have faced, reinsurance costs, et cetera, means that placing insurance requires more work than ever.
The great thing is that, that also means that the need and the importance of a broker and a professional advisor increase rather than decrease. We're very enthusiastic about the progress we've made, but equally, as you've seen from the increase in our margin targets, our views on medium to long-term opportunities and upside remain, you know, quite bullish. We look forward to the year ahead. You know, we, we look forward to continuing to deliver, you know, our slightly tongue-in-cheek reference, you know, I think the 10th, 10th upgrade. Please don't build in further upgrades automatically, or as I said last time, don't upgrade my upgrade. You know, we are confident, we're focused, and, I'm really happy to share these results with you, and, I look forward to the conversations over the next week and a half.
Thank you very much, everybody.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.