Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the announcement of Cuscal's FY 2026 full-year results. I am Craig Kennedy, Managing Director of Cuscal, and I am joined today by our CFO, Jennifer Brice. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we gather today, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging. I extend that respect to all First Nations people joining us today. Today, I will take you through our FY 2026 highlights, including the Indue and Paymark acquisitions. Jen will then take you through our financial performance in more detail. I will then cover our strategy and outlook for FY 2027 before we open for questions. Turning to slide six.
FY 2026 was a defining year for Cuscal, with strong execution against our growth strategy, focused on increasing our scale, strengthening our position across Australia and New Zealand, while expanding the range of payment capabilities we deliver to clients. We delivered a strong full-year result, growing net operating income 20% to AUD 348 million, and underlying net profit after tax 20% to AUD 46.2 million. We completed two strategic acquisitions, Indue in December of last year and Paymark in May this year. Both acquisitions were completed against a backdrop of continued growth across our core business. We maintain a robust capital position, which supports a final dividend of AUD 0.07 per share, taking full-year dividend to AUD 0.115 per share. Before I hand over to Jen, I want to briefly revisit the strategic rationale for Indue and provide an update on our integration progress.
In December of last year, we completed the acquisition of Indue and brought together two organizations with a long history in payments, shared heritage, similar values, and a complementary client base. The acquisition has further diversified our client base and enhanced our product and service offerings, including the extension into prepaid cards. It also creates a stronger organization that can invest effectively, deliver a broader range of solutions, and create greater value for clients. At acquisition, we estimated annual run rate cost synergies of between AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million post-tax. We are pleased to confirm that synergy and integration targets are on track, which I will cover on the next slide. Turning to slide eight. Integration is progressing well, and we are pleased with both the pace of delivery and the level of engagement across the organization.
To highlight a few key synergy and integration achievements so far, our Integration Advisory Committee is fully operational and providing strong governance and oversight across the integration program, helping ensure key decisions are made quickly and risks are proactively managed. Work streams are well embedded across the business with clear accountability, established delivery plans, and a strong engagement from both the Cuscal and Indue teams. Client migration schedules have been agreed and planning is well advanced, providing a clear pathway for execution. Integration activities completed to date have delivered. Integration activities completed to date have delivered while maintaining service levels and continued support to clients across both organizations. In FY 2026, we delivered AUD 2.1 million of post-tax synergies, which equates to approximately AUD 3.5 million in annualized synergies. This is consistent with our expectations in both magnitude and timing.
While this program of work is complex, it's something we've done many times. We remain confident in our execution plan and the pathway to achieving the targeted AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million in annual run rate synergies by FY 2029. We also completed the acquisition of Paymark in May of this year. Paymark is New Zealand's leading payment infrastructure provider and delivers immediate scale in New Zealand, extending our growth opportunities to an attractive adjacent market. The acquisition is highly aligned with our strategy of participating in critical payment infrastructure and deepening our role in the payment ecosystem. It adds an established business with strong market position, long-standing customer relationships, and significant strategic relevance within the New Zealand payment landscape. It is also a business with limited integration complexity, allowing management to remain focused on growth and execution.
Based on performance to date and all we've seen since the completion of the acquisition, the financial expectations that we outlined at acquisition remain unchanged. Looking forward, we see compelling opportunities in the New Zealand market. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has strongly signaled its intent to support real-time payments capability. New Zealand's emerging digital identity framework creates credible opportunity for payment-linked identity use cases. Paymark is well-positioned to pursue a meaningful role in these and other potential developments as the payments landscape evolves in New Zealand. While these opportunities remain at an early stage, they reinforce our view that Paymark provides not only current earnings contribution, but also attractive long-term strategic optionality. Together, Indue and Paymark have significantly expanded our scale, capability, and long-term growth opportunities across Australia and New Zealand. With that, I'll hand over to Jen to take you through our financial performance.
Thanks, Craig, and good morning, everyone. Today, I will focus on underlying results which reflect operational performance and remove significant non-recurring, non-operational items together with the associated tax implications. I'd encourage investors to read our annual report, which provides a comprehensive view of both our statutory and underlying results. Turning now to the key highlights for the year, I'll begin on slide 11. We are pleased with the strength of the FY 2026 result, which reflects continued momentum across the business and the benefits of executing our growth strategy. Transaction volumes increased 12% to 4.8 billion. Underlying NOI increased 20% to AUD 347.7 million, and underlying NPAT increased 20% to AUD 46.2 million. Earnings per share increased 20% to AUD 0.239 per share, reflecting the higher underlying profit and modest increase in weighted average shares following the issuance of shares to support the Paymark acquisition. Turning now to the drivers of that performance.
Net operating income grew 20% during the year, supported by contributions from the acquisitions of Indue and Paymark, as well as continued organic growth. Transaction volumes grew 12% overall, and the addition of Indue and Paymark has expanded the range of revenue streams across the group, creating a more diversified earnings profile, while naturally resulting in greater variation between transaction growth and NOI growth. On an organic basis, NOI growth was 6%, in line with the 6% organic transaction volume growth. Against the revenue backdrop, I'll now step through the cost profile for the year. The increase in underlying operating expenses primarily reflects the addition of Indue and Paymark. On an organic basis, we have remained disciplined on costs, with operating expenses growing approximately 4%, which is below the rate of the organic NOI growth.
With Indue having been owned through seven months of FY 2026, costs have become more integrated across the Cuscal and Indue entities. However, to provide some more color on the organic cost results, employee expenses increased, reflecting a combination of wage inflation and growth in specialized headcount across risk management product and support functions to support future growth. Non-salaried expenses increased as we continued to invest in platform resilience, security, enterprise tooling, and technology capabilities. Depreciation and amortization benefit from non-recurring R&D tax incentive credits of AUD 2.9 million during the period. We have also continued to reduce our reliance on third-party consultants as we build capability internally, which has helped offset costs elsewhere. While we will continue to invest in growth, risk management, and technology, we do remain focused on the operating leverage and disciplined cost management. Turning now to our balance sheet.
As shown on slide 14, Cuscal's balance sheet remains strong, and we retain a stable AA- credit rating from S&P. As a reminder, our ADI license remains a key strategic advantage, which enables us to retain client deposits and supports settlement certainty. As a regulated ADI, we are also required to maintain appropriate capital adequacy ratios under APRA's Prudential Framework. Following the capital deployment for the Indue and Paymark acquisitions, our capital ratio was 19.1% at year-end, in line with our capital operating range. Underlying return on equity for the full year increased 120 basis points to 11.7%. This reflects stronger earnings performance together with disciplined management of capital. We are really pleased with the strength of our financial position and the performance delivered during FY 2026. With that, I'll hand back to Craig to discuss our strategic priorities and outlook for FY 2027.
Thanks, Jen. As we enter FY 2027, our priorities are clear and remain aligned to the strategy we've consistently outlined. We remain focused on supporting client growth and continuing to strengthen the capabilities we provide to clients across the payments value chain. We will continue investing in technology, resilience, and transaction monitoring to ensure our platforms remain secure, scalable, and fit for future growth. We remain firmly focused on delivering the integration, achieving synergies, and capturing the strategic benefits of the combination. We will continue advancing the Paymark strategy and supporting its role in the development of New Zealand payments market. We remain disciplined in how we assess and pursue growth opportunities. While that has been evident for our acquisition activity, we are also building capability in emerging opportunities such as digital assets and stablecoin, where we see the potential for future client demand.
We're entering FY 2027 with greater scale, broader capabilities, and a stronger market position than at any time or any point in our history. We believe that places us in a strong position to execute on opportunities ahead and continue to deliver sustainable growth. Turning to slide 17 and our outlook for the coming fiscal year. Cuscal expects a strong FY 2027, with transaction volumes and underlying NPAT expected to deliver percentage growth in the mid-20s. Breaking this down into its key components, organic growth is expected to remain consistent with our medium-range expectations in the low double digits. Indue is expected to continue growth in mid-single digits, reflecting a full 12 months of ownership in FY 2027, compared with the seven months in FY 2026, including the ongoing delivery of integration synergies.
Paymark is expected to contribute growth in the low double digits through a full year of ownership, compared to a little over a month in FY 2026. Before we open for questions, I would like to extend my sincere thanks to our employees, clients, and shareholders for their continued support throughout the year. FY 2026 has been a transformational year for Cuscal. The successful completion of Indue and Paymark acquisitions, alongside the strong performance of our core business, reflects the dedication of our people and the trust our clients place in us every day. We are pleased with the progress we have made during FY 2026 and look forward to updating you on our continued execution and performance throughout FY 2027. With that, we will now open the line for questions. Thank you for your time.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you have additional questions, please rejoin the question queue. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from Alastair Hunter with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Morning, Craig. Thank you very much for the opportunity to ask questions, and well done on the result. Can I just ask in terms of your volume growth outlook for the 2027 year, particularly referencing Acquiring had looked like had a very difficult second half of the year. So I am interested in your views as to how the various buckets are going to contribute to the mid-20s growth and transaction volumes for next year, please.
Yeah. I think, Alastair, as you are aware, one of the benefits of having the portfolio of activity we have in our business, at any given time, there can be some swings and roundabouts in the individual parts of that portfolio or domain, but we tend to have some offsetting factors in other areas. Acquiring is an interesting one. I think we outlined, even from the time of prospectus, there was some natural reshaping. Whilst we may not have lost clients, they might have processed originally with us domestically and now adopting some international activity. So there is still some of that washing through. But in the medium term, I think the acquiring might be the most challenged for growth in FY 2027, and that has been built into our forecast.
But we see it picking up in the subsequent periods where we've got a pipeline of activity and some structural changes that we think are working in our favor.
Again, just to follow up in terms of what's been flagged from yourselves as sort of a medium-term organic 6%-8% transaction growth. How do you see, ex the impact of the two acquisitions, where do you see the 2027 year fitting organically in an aggregate 6%-8% longer-term range?
Yeah, I think it's pretty consistent. As I said, there would be some swings and roundabouts in the individual components, but at an overall portfolio level, we're maintaining that expectation.
The next question comes from Matt Dunger with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on maintaining your investment spend flat at AUD 32 million. Craig, you've flagged a number of investments here that you're looking to make around the New Zealand switch, the RBNZ real-time payments potentially, and digital assets and stablecoins. I just wondered if you could elaborate on where investment spend could go to and the timing around lifting the investment spend.
Yeah, Matt, thank you. The investment spend remains consistent as has been in the prior years on a cash basis, circa AUD 30 million. The Paymark one is a more exceptional item. When we talk about a cash spend of AUD 30 million annually, that's in our normal operational. That can be a product feature, it can be a compliance cost, it can be a technology life cycle. But when we look at that Paymark opportunity, that's why we had a different view on the maintainable earnings going forward, and certainly in the next couple of years. We knew they had an investment to make in their infrastructure. And so that's outside or in addition to that normal spend, and that's specific to that Paymark opportunity. The other things we've mentioned or loosely referenced, things like stablecoin, that's in our normal experimental investment envelope.
It's very early in that potential life cycle at the moment. So again, that's not a material or exceptional item. Yeah. Hopefully, that gives you a bit of a flavor.
Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you very much, Craig. Just to follow up, could I just ask on the dividend and the stat versus cash profit going forward, given you've flagged AUD 25 million-AUD 30 million over the next two years coming through below the line. How are you thinking about the capital position and the dividend on a cash versus a stat basis, given the organic capital generation will be impacted by those sort of one-offs?
Yeah, I think you've called out the combination of things we have to look at. I'd highlight one more. We've got a dividend payout policy of 40%-60%. We will look through the statutory result to consider what that ratio looks like on an underlying basis, and we're also looking to maintain our Tier 1 capital in the 18%-19% range. We take all of those factors into consideration, and then obviously, if we had an appetite to increase our dividend, given all of those factors, we'd want to make sure we had a view that it's maintainable going forward. That's how we assessed it this year, and that's why we paid an extra half of one cent during this period.
The next question comes from Hayden Nicholson with Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, team. Just following on from Alastair's question around the volumes. Did you actually see any drop-off over that April to May period? Things seemed pretty soft in terms of where they were running at fuel prices, et cetera. Did they follow that trend? Or is there anything you can point to in the period that may have been exceptional?
I think there was, generally across the market, a little bit of a softening. But I'm not sure I'd point it to fuel prices or things like that. I don't think that was a driver, so I can't see anything particularly explaining why the market was softer. But as a normal rule, things like increased fuel prices, we don't normally see a drop-off in volume. Sometimes we actually see an increase in volume because people make smaller purchases more frequently. So, there's no particular rhyme or reason about that. And obviously, the market's back to normal or in a more normal pattern at the moment.
Yeah, we've seen June and July pick up.
Yeah.
Yep. Great. Just as a follow-up on the synergies, given we don't have a profit split for the different businesses, just interested, is the employee OpEx up? Is there anything that could mitigate your AUD 5 million- AUD 8 million as a run rate? Then what are you also baking in a dollar sense in that bridge to the FY 2027, if I may ask, please?
Sorry, you were saying the AUD 5 million - AUD 8 million of?
Yeah, of run rate synergies.
Of synergies. Yeah.
Yeah, it sounds like you are on track, but just asking if there is anything that could relate the actual extraction of that with the employee OpEx up and if you have actually factored in a specific number into the guidance for Indue.
The guidance does include our assumption for synergies for FY 2027 already. There is nothing else in particular.
The next question comes from Richard Harrisberg with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Morning to you, and congratulations on a great result and a great outlook for FY 2027. My question was just on the underlying NPAT growth that you are expecting, the mid-20%. Does that include the Paymark switch tech investments, or is that being stripped out? What is the spending split of the AUD 21 million per year? Is there a larger spend towards the back end, FY 2028, or is a lot of it upfront? Thanks.
In terms of the first part of your question, it is all included in the guidance already. Any of the switch investment is already in the guidance. In terms of the split, it is not back-ended. It is pretty consistent throughout the period in which the Switch will be undertaken.
Okay, that is really helpful. Then maybe just on margins. You are expecting margin expansion on an organic basis. But on a consolidated basis, is there a little bit of dilution from Indue and Paymark? Or how should we think about margins as a whole, for next year?
Yeah, there is a little bit of dilution from Indue and Paymark. But just bearing in mind that, as we have said before, Indue is a cost synergy play, and we are expecting that once we recognize those synergies towards the back end of the integration, that we will see an improvement in the margin that relates to the Indue business.
The next question comes from Elijah Mayr with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Good morning and congrats on the results, team. Maybe just following on from just the Paymark question. Is it right to assume that you still expect the AUD 5.4 million in NPAT for FY 2027 from Paymark in FY 2027?
Yeah, there is nothing that we have seen to date that would indicate that that is any different, and that is certainly what we have got within our guidance.
Excellent. Then just maybe more broadly, if there is any sort of commentary you can provide on client additions or attrition, or trends and volumes across some of the key clients.
There's nothing material in either direction. We've renewed 100% of all client contracts that were due, or certainly all material client contracts that were due. And there's been no notable client attrition. What I would highlight is in acquiring where there was planned migration of some activity that was being processed domestically and is now being processed from one global location. From the time we listed, that was outlined in our prospectus. There's been a bit of that still washing through our numbers, but it's pretty stable from this point forward.
The next question comes from Jason Shao with Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just another one on Paymark. You called out previously Paymark has seen a bit of underinvestment in New Zealand and some market share losses as a result. Is that extra investment you flagged into Paymark reflective of a catch-up investments to get you to where you want to be to sustain your market share, or does it effectively build more foundations for future capabilities?
It'd be fair to say that the switch that they use is very robust, but clunky in terms of ongoing development, compliance changes. Time and cost to market is probably no longer contemporary, and that's underpinning. Our view in the medium term won't be well-supported because it's a less common environment to support. Whereas we're moving to a cloud native, very contemporary solution, much more perimeter-driven, much more responsive to ongoing product development and compliance requirements in the market. So that's about operating the current business more effectively. And it'd be fair to say, yeah, that investment was overdue. So, that's fine in hand. In terms of if the New Zealand or the Reserve Bank of New Zealand wanted to adopt real-time payments, it would be ideal if they wanted that to be consistent with the Australian market where we have already built all of that solution.
Even if we didn't operate it, we may be able to bend that solution into the market. They're the sort of things you would like to see happen. Obviously at this point, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has just articulated that they need to progress towards real-time payments. They haven't suggested in what timeframe or what form.
Generally, whether it be that or in the future where you might move to digital accounts and stablecoin and other types of infrastructure changes in terms of payments, what we've demonstrated in the past, and particularly in Australia, whether that be the movement to things like Apple Pay or the adoption of real time, it's when you have those new changes introduced into the market is when we tend to perform at our best because it allows us to invest on behalf of a larger cohort, allow them to preserve their capital and not duplicate that investment and focus their energy on where it makes a difference, and that is in the customer experience. We think that will be even more so in New Zealand because it's a smaller market with less volume. It's unlikely major participants over there will all want to duplicate the same investment and infrastructure.
We think that's been holding back some of the progress in the market. So whilst there's nothing to execute there at the moment, I would just separate the upgrade from the switch environment, which is about supporting the current activities and the current clients. Whereas if New Zealand wants to move ahead with real-time payments, that'll be an incremental opportunity.
Great. Thanks so much. Just a clarifying point on something you might have mentioned before, but we shouldn't expect, for the Indue acquisition, for synergies to be realized at a similar rate to integration cost. It sounds like synergies are more backdated towards FY 2029.
Yeah, they are definitely backdated. You should not assume that they are at the same rate as the integration costs themselves.
So a lot of the work we do to progressively migrate product services and clients to our platform is done in advance of that migration. Whereas you only get to retire the third party vendor costs that are specific to Indue once that migration is completed. So there is an investment ahead of the cost going away, if that makes sense.
And when Craig says when the migration is completed, it is all migrations, not client by client. The cost is essentially fixed.
Yeah, it is unfortunate that if you have done 90% of the movement, you have still got 10% left behind. You cannot turn off the infrastructure.
The next question comes from Tim Piper with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Morning, team. Just a follow-up on OpEx. Excluding acquisitions, OpEx, I think, was up 4%. It was 6% in the first half, so it is very constrained in the second half. Just thinking about OpEx into FY 2027, firstly, I know that the Indue acquisitions, obviously, synergies are backend weighted, but was there any early small synergies that came through that number in the second half of 2026? Then sort of an underlying growth rate for operating expenses into FY 2027. You have guided to, obviously, a double-digit growth rate at NPAT for the underlying business, but is there anything we should be aware of that sort of benefited that number in 2026 that might come back in 2027?
FY 2026 had about AUD 2.1 million of synergies for Indue in the number. Obviously, most of that is an annualized number, though.
AUD 3.5 million.
No, sorry.
Up end.
It's AUD 2.1 million. And Yeah.
AUD 2.1 million.
AUD 2.1 million actual in the period. Most of that obviously would be in the second half because there was only one month of results in December. In terms of going forward, it is all within our guidance. Anything that will come through in synergies is already within guidance that we have given to NPAT. There is nothing incredibly unusual other than the fact that obviously we are annualizing Indue and Paymark for the full year during FY 2027 in terms of the cost profile.
They are post-tax numbers you were talking about there?
Yes.
The next question comes from Hayden Nicholson with Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Just with the RBA surcharging ban and interchange cap coming into effect in early 2027, not insinuating this affects you, but to your clients, how do you expect that to compound with the current volume trends? Also, what is the feedback on their part? Are you thinking any forced mergers or migrations on your part?
Yeah, we haven't seen any of that to date. If anything, we've seen a couple of people doubling down on their investment and looking at different ways of going to market and different commercial models in terms of how they steer into their sales and renewal activity. Too early to call, but as you know, we've been very clear there's no direct consequence for us. At this stage, it's looking like relatively little indirect consequence via the sort of people we support in their market activity.
The next question comes from Tim Piper with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Sorry, I got cut off before I could ask the second question. Just on the net interest income for FY 2026 and the second half in particular. I know it was abnormally high in the first half. If we look at the second half number for that net interest income, is that the baseline to take going forward, roughly speaking, outside of interest rate changes, et cetera, grow that with volume across the business?
It's not quite in line with the go forward. However, what happened in the second half, obviously, is we had some increase that related to the acquired business for Indue. So that's actually the bulk of the increase from half one to half two. Half one, as you also mentioned, had the gains in the first half of the year that we talked about at the half year results, which is around AUD 2 million worth of gains that resulted from the sale of the investments that we had, that we sold down to actually to buy the Indue business. In addition to that, there were some increases in client deposits. If you're thinking about NOI compared to revenue growth, just bear in mind that Paymark doesn't have NII, so you can't use that as a proxy to drive forward the NII business.
You need to exclude Paymark because they really do not have an NII line. Hopefully, that gives you a bit of color.
Got it. Yeah, sorry, just to understand what you are saying there. NII was AUD 19 odd million in the second half of 2026, down from AUD 20 million in the first half.
Correct.
There was a bit. Yep, got that. So that AUD 19 million, as you mentioned, do not grow including Paymark. But is that AUD 19 million-
Yes
a like for like, or is there anything sort of within Indue and consolidating that drove any abnormality in the second half NII number? Or like a trade number?
There's no real one-off of significance in the second half.
Understood. Thanks.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. The next question comes from Alastair Hunter with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a question in terms of your tiering price structures. I'm just interested, as you're getting the volume increases, now I know some of this is coming from acquisition, but as you're seeing very strong growth across things like NPP channels, plus also some of the mergers amongst some of your, particularly mutual ADIs, but also some of the listed ADIs. The sort of scale increasing within your growth. Just interested in how that sort of volume to NOI translates given the tiering price structures that operate.
Yeah, I'm just trying to understand where you're going there.
Yeah.
A lot of moving parts there, Alastair . It depends which clients are driving the growth. It would have a different impact if you had major clients growing enormously versus smaller clients merging. It doesn't have the same amount of impact. Generally, I think if you're trying to understand the overall correlation, I don't know that there's going to be any material changes, certainly not for FY 2027.
Yep. Then final question, just in terms of the non-transaction fee income. Is there anything, looking into the next year, that's sort of additive or won't repeat in those non-transaction fee sort of project type income streams?
No.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I will now hand the call back to Mr. Craig Kennedy for closing remarks.
Once again, thank you for your attendance this morning and your questions. We look forward to catching up with everyone over the next week or so. Thank you again.