Thank you for standing by, welcome to the HUB24 Limited FY23 results call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. For operator assistance throughout the call, please press star zero, and finally, I would like to advise all... Thank you. I'd now like to welcome Andrew Alcock, Managing Director, to begin the conference. Andrew, over to you.
It is, as always, a pleasure to talk about this great company and what we've been building together as a team in this industry. We've got some really good results we'd like to share with you today. Thank you very much. If we move straight to the highlight slide, which is the 2nd slide on the pack in terms of our financial results. Some headlines there. We've got continuing momentum and a significant uplift in results with revenue and underlying EBITDA at a group level, both up 45%. That's AUD 102.4 million of underlying EBITDA. That's spread across the segments there as well. Great results, great uplifts for us in FY23.
Our total Funds Under Administration for our customers is AUD 83.3 billion, and our platform or custodial FUA at 30 June was AUD 62.7 billion, which is up 26% on last year. As at Thursday last week, that had risen again to AUD 64.5 billion. As we said in our market release note, we've seen a better than Q4 run rate for net inflows so far or to date for FY24, pleased about that as well. In terms of what that means for shareholders, we've got a final dividend at AUD 0.185, fully franked, which is up 48% on PCP, and our earnings per share diluted are up 136% to AUD 0.461 per share. Kitrina will talk more about our financial results later on in the presentation.
Moving to the next slide, we talk about HUB24 being about empowering better financial futures together, which is, of course, our purpose statement. It's what we believe in. It's how we act and behave in terms of thinking about our business and how we develop it. As part of that, we have a vision to lead the wealth industry as the best provider of integrated platform, technology, and data solutions. On this slide, there's some graphs about that, which we can talk about to evidence that. Australia's best platform, you'll see the awards a bit later on. We have the third fastest growing superannuation fund in the country behind two massive industry funds. We have market-leading SMSF admin software with Class, and of course, market-leading managed portfolio capability. There's some other items on the slide there as well.
With these components or ingredients, or provide more efficient solutions for advisors and for their clients, and, and come to market with innovation, that is ingredients, and using technology to unlock value so that we build a sustainable proposition, and we actually help customers achieve their goal and help them empower a better financial future together. Taking a look at the results in a bit more detail over some time, though, you'll see again that we've consistently delivered growth and shareholder value for many years in a row. With our four-year CAGR of funds under administration, 46%, and underlying EBITDA for group of 61%. These are great results in a reliable... Highlights for FY23 on the next slide. On the left-hand side, there's a, there's a list of items there, which no doubt we'll talk about through the presentation.
We've talked about them many times before, such as our flows or our pipeline, Myprosperity and other items there, and in particular, Class being positioned for. It's about leading today, delivering customer value and growth in our core propositions across our enterprise: Class, HUB24, HUBconnect, and now Myprosperity. Thinking about creating tomorrow or building the platform of the future, absolutely focused on that, and some of the achievements we've delivered this year are evidence to that.
The last one there is about building together or collaborating to shape the future of the wealth industry, which is really about helping this industry, which has undergone profound change over the last few years, to develop new solutions and new ways of working, to deliver advice effectively and efficiently, to create more access to advice, but also to use technology to build the infrastructure to support the emergence of this industry as it continues to transform.
From our perspective, we're very much focused on winning and making sure we delight our customers with our propositions today, but also on continuing to disrupt and lead change in the industry, in the industry, but also to play our part as a key industry player, to work across the board, to advocate for change with QAR and other items, and to build solutions that, quite frankly, will put us in a good position as an industry to deliver on our promise to Australians. It's great. It's been a great year for recognition as well. Moving to the next slide. We talk about this quite often. Really proud to say that this year we've done really well. We had a clean sweep with the Adviser Ratings Awards, winning overall best platform and all the categories there.
From an adviser sentiment point of view, with Wealth Insights, equal first in terms of satisfaction from advisers and from Investment Trends, best overall platform and other awards there, few awards there. Interestingly, there, the number one I like to talk about most is number 1 for primary advocacy for platform use, which basically means for advisers who have a primary platform or a platform of choice, if you choose HUB24 as that platform, you have greater advocacy for us than other advisers who choose a different primary platform. It's a key indicator for us that we're doing things right, but also drives us to continue to innovate and deliver great service. In the pack for completeness, we've got a slide on our managed portfolio capability.
I'm not gonna talk about it today, but it's there for completeness for those who'd like to understand more about what we do with managed portfolios. I'm gonna move on to the growth and market share slide. HUB24 today is the seventh largest platform by market share. Our custody, again, four-year CAGR of 48%, custody FUA, 48% growth over as a four-year CAGR. Our market share, in the last 12 months, or the latest available data from to March 2023, has grown from 5.1% to 6.1%. In that same, same time period, we're ranked 1 for quarterly and annual net inflows.
If you take a look at a snapshot of what's been going on in the industry at large and understand our success in the context of the whole industry, I've got a chart there from 2018 to 2023, with HUB's share or share of net inflows going from 12.7% to 64% in 2023. The 64% is a statistical truth, but it's an anomaly given the 101% outflow share of institutions. Fascinating time in the industry, we're seeing it continue over time, that the exodus from mainstream or incumbent traditional platforms has continued, and there is a clear pack of winners in terms of the market share moving ahead.
HUB24 has the fastest growing share of market in terms of net in flows over that period, we hope to continue to lead in that space. As I said, our market share has grown to 6.1% in 2023. It was 0.9% in 2018. Whereas the insto platform market share has dropped from about 75% to 64% over the last five years. Certainly puts us in a great position for or having a great runway in terms of future growth potential. Having 6% of the market and delivering on our promises, and delivering such great outcomes in terms of products, value for clients, and service, and being ranked the way we are, there's plenty of room to move to grow.
This slide here, we've got about our strong inflows from existing relationships and the opportunity moving forward. We included this in the pack at half year to explain a little bit about how the business grows and how the flow patterns work. Typically, advisor relationships deliver flows to us as a platform for up to about six years, and then it, and that's the bulk of their support for the platform. You have ongoing organic flows from those advisors. On the left-hand side, you can see the breakdown of net inflows we've had each financial year since 2020 to 2023, from existing advisor relationships, from new advisor relationships that were attached to a licensee, in which we had an agreement with, and/or, and from new licensee relationships.
You get reliable recurring flows from existing relationships year on year, with 75% of our flows in 2023 coming from existing relationships, 16% from new advisors who are attached to a national group that we have a relationship with or a large licensee, and 9% from new advisors. We do that quite regularly. It's the pattern of our growth. Interestingly, we have relationships or access to more than 74% of the total advisor market, and that's through the agreements we have with licensees to use the platform. In this year, we increased the number of active advisors on the platform by 15%. We have coverage to 26% of the market actively using HUB.
As I said before, hopefully in the same sense, reliable flows from existing relationships plus new flows from new relationships. That's about 500 new advisors in FY23. Put simply, we're continuing to grow. We're continuing to grow from our existing relationships, we're continuing to build new relationships, and there's plenty of runway and room to move to create more relationships. And in testament to that, we've also increased the percentage of usage or share of wallet, if you like, from advisors who use the platform. Since June 2020, the average advisor FUA on our platform has grown by 88% to an average of AUD 16 million. Hard to do when you're adding new advisors to the denominator of that equation each year, because they're coming on with lower amounts.
Interestingly, 7% of the advisors on our platform have more than AUD 50 million. With an average of 16 and some advisors at 50, it illustrates the growth potential that we have in our business if we continue to execute very well. The industry average for advisors is about AUD 65 million, just looking at some of the industry data around. As a business, we have a really, really strong opportunity to continue to grow. We get reliable flows from existing relationships. We've increased the number of relationships, and we're deepening those relationships with increasing FUA per advisor. As I said, with, with 7% of our advisors now more than AUD 50 million on HUB24, illustrating the potential for ongoing growth for our business as we as we'd like to certainly grow up from that 6% market share.
Moving on to Class for a second. Great today to say that Class now has over 200,000 accounts on Class and 640,000 companies on Corporate Messenger. We've done a lot of work in Class to refresh the team. We refreshed the growth team or the sales team, if you like. Certainly continuing to focus on customer service, and really made some interesting progress with increasing engagement with customers across the industry. We've been working actively in the industry as advocates with thought leadership and training, and really focused on that core market in terms of supporting the industry and to grow the market. From all intents and purposes, Class is performing to our expectation, but we've put in place the foundations for further growth, and we're starting to see that come through at the moment.
Building momentum and position for growth, and of course, Class is helping us with our platform of the future strategy or how we integrate a lot of the assets we have inside our group to actually create new innovative products that deliver value and, and lead change in the wealth management industry. None of this is possible without our talented team of people, and we really, really understand that, we've got a great team, and our success is the result of all of us working together. 86% of our people are dedicated to customer and innovation functions, product tech, business development, customer service, and our engagement this year has gone up 2% to 74% across our employee group.
We're absolutely focused on investing in our people as they do deliver that value, and it's key for us as we grow and continue to grow, to keep that edge with our customer service and so forth. We're enhancing our employee value proposition to attract and retain, and develop people. We have a new chief people officer, focused on working on our employee brand and strengthening HUB24 as a great place to work, and we're attracting talent through many channels, certainly investing in learning and development, and really striving to build on our purpose-driven, diverse, inclusive, and high-performance culture. We really want to support employee retention and advocacy, as that's what makes the edge in our customer service.
Thank you to our team, and absolutely committed to building the best team as possible in this industry and living our values that are on the slide as well. I'm going to hand over to Kitrina Shanahan, to give us some snapshots and talk through our financial results. Over to you, Kat.
Thank you, Andrew. I'll now run through the financial results. Here on this slide, you can see we have a snapshot of the group, the platform, and the tech solutions segment, showing the revenue underlying EBITDA and AUD 80 million, and the underlying EBITDA worth AUD 102 million, with the platform representing AUD 75 of underlying EBITDA, and the custody FUA representing 97% of the platform revenue. As Andrew mentioned, just over 4,000 of active advisors using the platform. Tech solutions, which represents the Class and the HUBconnect parts of the business. Revenue grew to just under AUD 68 million, underlying EBITDA was just under AUD 22 million. There are, you know, just over 6,000 practices, financial practices using the Class solutions. Moving on to the next slide.
Again, we have the group financial results. You can see in the table on the left-hand side, where we have the operating revenue, operating expenses, and the underlying EBITDA, all growing 45%, which is driving a strong performance in the underlying EBITDA margin as well, where we've held it flat to 36.6%. That's in the context of the macro environment, environment that we've got, but also the changes that we made to the Class capitalization policy for the software, which you can see in the graph on the right-hand side. During the first half of this year, we aligned the Class policy to the group policy, where we only capitalize technology development costs. Prior to that change, the group underlying EBITDA margin grew 1.8% to 38.4%.
Moving on to the next slide, we've got the platform segment. Again, you can see Andrew was mentioning total FUA grew 23% to AUD 80 billion, with the custody FUA up 26% to AUD 62.7 billion, the non-custody PARS FUA up 11% to just under AUD 18 billion. The revenue was up 30% to AUD 209 million, operating expenses up 26%. This difference in the growth between the revenue and the operating expenses, saw strong platform operating leverage come through, which gave us 2% uplift in the underlying EBITDA margin to 40.8% in the year. On the right-hand side, you can see the walk of the FUA composition from the AUD 65.6 billion of full year 2022 to the AUD 80 billion at 30th of June this year.
There was AUD 9.7 billion of net inflows from continuing business before the Xplore Super Admin discontinuation, and there was AUD 4.3 billion of market movement in the custody portfolio and AUD 1.7 billion of market and net inflows in the non-custody part of the portfolio. Moving on to the next slide, we have a five-year trend for the platform segment, and there's just a couple of things that I'd call out on this slide. We've got a walk here from FY19 to FY23, and you can see that the underlying EBITDA margin over that period has increased 7.5% over the five years. The underlying EBITDA margin from a dollar perspective, has grown 47% CAGR from AUD 18 million back in FY19 to AUD 85 million in FY23.
This slide is basically demonstrating the scale and the operating leverage that we have coming through on the platform segment. Moving to the next slide, we have the composition of the platform custody FUA, and you can see in the donuts on the right-hand side, the Xplore Super Admin last year represented 3% of the FUA and 1% of the revenue. This year, we had just 1% of the revenue and the custody part coming through Xplore Super Admin as we discontinued it. At the end of the year, retail represented 86% of the AUD 62.7 billion of custody FUA and institutional large clients represented 14%. The graph on the bottom right-hand side shows the composition of the custody revenue margin, which grew 4 bits in the year.
This 4-bit increase was largely due to the RBA rate increases that we saw in May and June 2022, which took us to the upper end of our cash management fee. The admin fee compression has been very small this year. That's a factor of volatility in the market and the scale of the portfolio, with quite a large portion already at the various tiers and caps in the portfolio. The retail margin grew from 37 basis points in full year 2022 to 40 basis points, and the institutional margin held relatively flat at 14 basis points during the year. Moving on to the next slide. I won't talk on this one very much. It's here just in case people want to have a look at the half-on-half movements in the platform revenue.
You can see that in the top right-hand side. Again, that links back to the RBA rate increases back in May, June 2022. If we move to the next slide, we have the tech solutions result. As Andrew was mentioning, you can see here that the Class accounts grew 2%, just over 200,000. Class document orders grew just over 173,000. Companies using the Corporate Messenger service grew 8% to just over 645,000. You'll see the revenue, operating expenses, and underlying EBITDA growth rates are very large this year. That's because we've recognized Class for a full 12 months this year, and we acquired Class in February last year, which was only 4.5 months recognized, which is why we've got such large percentage growth rates.
On the right-hand side, you can see the underlying EBITDA margin walk. In full year 2022, tech solutions' underlying EBITDA margin was 39.2%, and then we had the 13.9 pillar represents the full 12 months recognition. We have an incremental AUD 3 million worth of cost synergies, cost savings in the Class business. This is on top of the AUD 1 million of cost savings that we recognized in full year 2022. We had an uplift in HUBconnect expenses. HUBconnect Technology supports the reporting, the Present, reporting functionality and the data, and so we've had an uplift in some costs there and some great feedback on that functionality.
Those walks would take the underlying EBITDA margin in the tech solutions segment to 39.4%, so relatively flat year-on-year, and then you have the AUD 4.8 million worth of alignment to the HUB24 ca pitalization policy. Moving on to the next slide, we have the group expenses. Here you can see that group expenses grew 33% year-on-year, which is partly represented by having Class in there for 12 months. The largest part of the expense base is the employee expenses of AUD 133 million, which is up AUD 42 million year-on-year. This is driven by the headcount increases to service the clients, support the technology business, including the cyber uplift this year.
We've also got increases in HR, HR and our risk and compliance functions, which supports our larger, our larger business and larger scale that we have. Moving on to the next slide, we have a walk of our increasing profitability from underlying EBITDA to underlying NPAT and, and statutory NPAT. We have the underlying EBITDA of AUD 102 million, up 45%. We then have AUD 11 million of share-based payments, AUD 11.5 million of depreciation and amort, and then AUD 19 million of tax, which takes you to the underlying NPAT, up 64% to AUD 59 million. Moving from underlying NPAT to statutory NPAT, we have the strategic transactions and project costs, which includes Xplore integration, which is circa AUD 6 million.
We have the SMSF Access project, product that was launched, Myprosperity acquisition costs in there. We also have large transitions. We announced the EQT AUD 4 billion large transition. We'll also continue to work on other opportunities in there as well. We have the impairment of AUD 3.3 million for Diverger that we recognized in the first half. We have the tax on the notable items. I will just make a brief comment on our effective tax rate, which was 21.7% this year. There's some benefits in there for R&D.
We have a higher R&D recognition in the full year 2022 tax return that was completed during the year, and we also get to recognize the benefits of purchasing treasury shares on market to service the employee share schemes that are out there, which are the two things that are driving the effect, the lower effective tax rate this year. When we move on to the final slide in the finance section, today, we announced a share buyback of up to AUD 50 million over the next 12 months, starting 11th of September this year. This recognizes our strong balance sheet position and our strong cash reserve, with 97% of the group's underlying EBITDA converted to operating cash flows, and we're expecting that trend to continue.
We believe that the share buyback will increase shareholder returns, but also enable us to keep the flexibility to invest in opportunities and continue to invest in the business. With that, I will hand back to Andrew.
Thank you, Kitrina. A few words about our strategy and outlook, then we'll open up to some questions. Certainly, in this industry, we've seen phenomenal amounts of change over the last decade or so, and it's continuing. In fact, there's been lots of change, and we've embraced that change, run with it, and tried to secure opportunities resulting from that change. In many extents, HUB24 has created some change as well. It is continuing. We're not sitting still. We're not sitting still with just market-leading products. We intend to embrace some of the themes in the industry and continue to consolidate our leadership position. On this slide, just a few key trends there. A couple I'll talk about. The licensee model in Australia is continuing to evolve.
We used to talk about how aligned distribution or licensees are moving away from institutions and moving to third parties or boutiques or getting their own license. That's certainly continuing evolving with the rise of new aggregators, of those who left in alignment, building aggregation or purchasing groups or, or groups of advisors who are working with well-known asset consultants to build a great solution for their clients, and choosing a great platform solution as well. We're also seeing a continuation of disaggregation from institutions with some recent announcements of late.
This opens up opportunities for us to continue to grow our footprint, and particularly as well with the Quality of Advice Review, where the delivery of advice should become easier, with some of the changes coming through around SOAs and fee consents, allows us to help advisors become more efficient and hopefully, help them deliver advice to more clients. On the infrastructure front, absolutely, there's demand for integrated tech and data solutions. Data doesn't work well in this industry. There's lots of point solutions. We need to get them to talk together to make life more easy or efficient for advisors and clients. There's a critical need for investment to do that in wealth management, given the change in players over the last few years. Of course, cybersecurity is very, very important as well, in terms of trends moving forward.
On a demographic front, we're also seeing shifts with an aging population. There is a need for effective retirement product solutions, with longevity-based risk, as well as sequencing risk involved in that, in terms of having the right solution so that retirees don't run out of money too early. With that will come an intergenerational wealth transfer as well, whereas you're looking at solutions that can help a family deal with the transfer of wealth from retirement through to those who are starting out as a intergenerational transfer. With that demographic change, you've also got client demand for personalization, preferences, ESG, millennials and others with different views on how they invest. As a platform provider, we need to deal those, to those changing demographics and make sure our solutions can cater for them.
As well, the growth in SMSFs is coming about through increasing demand from millennials as well. HUB24, if we look at the next slide, we have a great group of assets or businesses in our group that allows us to play to those trends and link different solutions together to build a range of solutions that cater for those. You can see on the right-hand side, we have an architecture diagram about the business with Myprosperity on the top, providing secure customer single view of wealth portal capability. The other HUB platform and Class, and NowInfinity services linking into that, moving ahead. Then integration across the industry with data.
We're building a really great ecosystem with secure, permission-based data sharing to deliver on that goal of delivering to those trends and helping customers get a complete view of wealth. Some of the things that we want to take advantage of in there, we certainly are collaborating with retirement solution providers to extend our product set. We're increasing the range of investments on our platform, looking at alternative investments and unlisted fixed interests to deal with different marketplaces, enhancing the customer experience. Certainly, we'll be evolving our non-custody reporting, or as we call it, Present, our single wealth reporting, evolving that to an admin service as well on the HUB24 platform. Quite separate to the institutional-grade portfolio or non-custody portfolio admin service that we provide to brokers and their high-net wealth clients as well.
What does that all mean? If we translate that to the market and the offers, a bit of a complex slide here, but just to, to give you an outline of how we think about the market and how we have different products positioned over different life stages for different markets, being the high net- high net wealth, broker, and private wealth market, mass affluent market, and the mass market, where we intend to do some more work. Certainly got a range of products and services that deal with different life stages for those who are starting out, those who are growing well, from those who are retiring and/or downsizing, and then the intergenerational wealth transfer, particularly with SMSF Access, helping people get a portable vehicle at a younger age, at a sensible price.
Also, at the end of their time as running an SMSF, having a simpler product solution to allow them to keep that portability and deal with intergenerational transfer. We cut across several segments with several solutions, and we're certainly working on more as well. Having said that, we, we have a digital solution which we took to market with abrdn, which is really a digital advice solution with a really core set of investments as well that we've got in the can. We're looking around the corner at what we do with that, given QAR and other changes as well. Certainly focused on clients, life stages, and segments, and taking the best we've got of the ingredients in the HUB24 stable, in an integrated sense, to continue to lead the market moving forward.
From an outlook perspective for HUB24, what does it all mean? We certainly see growth momentum. We certainly see ourselves continuing to deliver customer and shareholder value. A few snippets there on the slide. Absolutely have a coherent strategy that's driving competitive advantage. We want to maintain and extend market leadership in our core propositions. We want to get growth, and we intend to get growth from both our existing and new relationships, and also enable industry transformation and advice delivery by taking data and technology, and playing our bit to sort out some of those gaps that we have in the industry, given the profound disruption that's occurred over time. We're focused on integrating our group capabilities to accelerate the growth of the platform and extend our leadership moving ahead.
The updated guidance we've got today, as part of that momentum and delivering that growth and shareholder value, we've updated a guidance statement there for the end of FY25, to have platform FUA, excluding PARS, so custody FUA in a range of AUD 92 billion-AUD 100 billion for FY25. That's the end of the presentation formally today. Be delighted to take questions and talk to those on the line, and we'll hand it back to you, Paul Lee. Thank you.
Thank you, Andrew and Kitrina, for the presentation. At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad, and we'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Brendan Carrig from Macquarie. Your line is open.
Good morning, Andrew and Kitrina. Maybe just quickly starting on the flows, or the FUA update that you've provided. I, I guess, given the market sell-off leading into the leading into the 17th of August, it looks like it's a reasonably strong run rate, but just wanted to maybe get some additional color on whether the correlation held up to the market, and, and sort of how we should be thinking about, about that, about the FUA run rate. Is there anything for EQT in the, in the flows to 17th August?
Thanks, Brendan. There's nothing for EQT there. We are working on the first of a series of phase transitions. The team are working hard on that. Nothing in those numbers to date. In terms of correlation, I might just explain that quite often or typically there's a correlation of market movement for us point to point. At times there are trading activities that actually confound that or it doesn't hold true. You might have advisors buying into the market or out of the market at the top or the bottom, and that actually changes that, that correlation. Certainly there has been a shift in pure correlation, if you like. The guidance we've got is that our flow rates so far this year is ahead of the run rate for quarter four, but not strictly correlated.
If you were doing mathematics at 60% or 70% to the ASX movement, it hasn't tracked that. There has been movement within those peaks and troughs and crystallization or purchasing. That means it's not strictly correlated. But we've had flows ahead of run rate to date, and that's very pleasing, a run rate for quarter four.
Okay, that's clear. Then just on the FY25 FUA targets, is it the same market assumption of that circa 5% market return in there, and so then the range is, you know, sort of, if I'm calculating correctly, about AUD 11 billion-AUD 15 billion of, of net flows per annum, including the EQT over the next 2 years?
Yep, that's correct, Brendan. If the, we obviously do sensitivities, but the, you know, standard baseline assumptions, market sort of 5%. Yeah, you're sort of, you know, right, including the EQT of AUD 4 billion, you know, in that first year, you're definitely looking at, AUD 14, you know, odd billion, and then there could be some sensitivities plus, minus to that.
Okay. Then I'll just ask on the tax rate, and then I'll jump back in the queue. Maybe just Kitrina, could you provide some more color around your expectations on where this might be going forward? It sounds like maybe some of them are repeatable benefits to the tax rate, but maybe some were one-off, if I'm interpreting what you said correctly.
Yeah, that's right. The R&D benefits, you know, you would expect, given the nature of HUB24 and Class, that we'll continue to get R&D benefits, so you'd expect that to continue to come through. We were probably a little bit conservative in our estimates when we did the full year 2022 estimates and when we completed the tax return, you know, obviously, that gave us a bit of a benefit. Then the treasury shares. Historically, we used to, the employee share schemes were serviced by issuing shares on market, and that was nondeductible from a tax expense when the share-based payments were booked.
Our capital management plan now and our policy is largely that we look to purchase shares on market to service those employee plans, and from a, you get the tax deduction from that because you're using, resources, company cap resources to do that. There was a bit of a catch-up this year just from that, because, that's a change of tax treatment when you demonstrate that that's your, purpose going forward.
Okay, the tax rate going forward, how should we be thinking about it?
The tax rate going forward, look, it's probably gonna be anywhere between, say, 25% and 30%, depending on various, you know, movements in the year.
Okay, that's helpful. I'll jump back in the queue. Thank you.
Thanks, Brendan.
Your next question comes from the line of James Bisinella from Unified Capital Partners. Your line is open.
Yeah, congratulations on the result, Andrew and Kitrina. Just a couple from me. Maybe just on the split of gross inflows versus gross outflows, just noting, the heightened outflow environment recently. Just wondering if there's been any shift in that over the past month and a half that you're seeing?
Do you want to go, Kit? Well, sorry. Generally, there's, you might fill me in, but generally, there's been a reduction recently in outflows to IDPS, but it's too early to be a trend, but that might be less people running to term deposits or cash and looking for stabilization or ready to invest, James. In terms of the mix, we did see a slight uptick towards, you know, a bit later than one of our peers, where you did have some exit of discretionary IDPS funds, a higher level of outflow rate. Certainly in superannuation, that's not necessarily changed its pension payments.
Our outflow rate's fairly consistent across the board, but at a deeper level, when you look at IDPS, you did see some money leaving, certainly in the high-net wealth space, in recent months. That seems to have slowed down in the last few weeks, but, you know, I'm not sure whether that's a trend, but it seems to have gone back to more close to normal. Is that a fair comment, Kit?
Yeah, that's fair.
Fantastic. Thank you. Just another one, just around the environment and pipeline for large transitions, just in terms of what you're seeing currently in the market.
Always in discussions. We are very comfortable with the EQT transition, where there are other opportunities in the market. We continue to prospect and work on those. Certainly there is opportunity out there. I know that people don't count that till we actually sign off on them. We don't talk about them until we sign off on them. Some of them gestate, some of them don't. But we're comfortable with that, and certainly, you saw from our guidance statement, that's really taking the 2024 guidance we had and adding, what is that, AUD 9 billion-AUD 11 billion range to that. W e're comfortable that there's opportunities out there. Certainly working on EQT, and we've got others talking to James. Hasn't dried up.
They're difficult to get, but at the same time, I would expect to think you should see us land some of these , every year or so. That's the best guidance I can give you at this point.
No, great to hear. J ust a last one from me. Just in terms of the AUD 50 million earmarked for the buyback, potential buyback, I mean, is the intention still to continue exploring M&A strategic opportunities, or is sort of capital management the new normal from here?
No, absolutely. In the buyback slide, we talk about retaining the flexibility to pursue strategic opportunities, and certainly the outlook slide. We've got our eyes open. Having said that, we've got a great group of assets. Our job is to stitch them together and execute on that strategy, which we're absolutely focused on, but, you know, we're alive and looking at other things if they make sense for us. We have a great stack at the moment, which we wanna deliver on. It's not about capital management in the future, it's just returning some capital shareholders, dealing with some dilution from the acquisition of Myprosperity, maintaining flexibility so we can continue to acquire, if it makes sense, and we can create shareholder and customer value.
Thanks for taking my questions. I'll jump back in the queue.
Your next question comes from the line of Kieren Chidgey from Jarden. Your line is open.
Morning, Andrew and Kitrina. Just a, a question around your product set. We've seen one of your competitors announce changes to their core product offering moving forward to, to try and make their product more, more competitive. Just wondering, how you're thinking about your current sort of product positioning and whether or not sort of, you know, that's, that's also, an area you're also considering making some revisions around?
We're very happy with our core product. The fact that our competitor has the same name on their product is not misleading, but they're very different products. Our core product has a much broader range of investments. It at some price points with the announcement from the other provider, they're very similar. We have a broader product, and it is aimed at the mass affluent or simple needs, mass affluent market and to lower balances. We're very comfortable with our core product. It's much broader than the one you're talking to. We do have, as I said, a similar product to the one that was announced in terms of just a restricted menu of portfolios or assets. We have built a very simple product for taking to market with digital advice.
That's not in market because of the abrdn digital advice piece we've talked about many times. We've got that capability certainly if we wanted to go there, which would be a lower balance type product, which might lead to even lower balances in mass market. Comfortable with our coverage, comfortable with the pricing of our core products, given the value it delivers. In, at some price points and some balances, it's equivalent or better than the one you're talking about. From our core product point of view, I don't think you'll see change at all. We've been very successful there in that heartland, been very successful with groups and advisors in terms of getting penetration there. I don't think that will shift. It's been a market that we know well.
That's great. Just a second question on scalability within the, the platform business. Y ou've had reasonable margin expansion, as, as I think you pointed out, Kitrina, one of the slides over the last 4 years. But just any, any sort of commentary around how we or how you're thinking about sort of cost growth or, or headcount, more specifically within that division as, as we move forward with, with the good flows you've sort of got embedded or implied within your FUA guidance?
W e've always said that we're focused on the underlying EBITDA margin and delivering operating leverage, while still investing in the business. We've always said that we'll, we'll invest, invest ahead of where we see the growth coming so that we can maintain our, you know, strong service levels. When we make the decisions on where we invest and when we invest, we do it with an eye on the underlying EBITDA margin and making sure that we can still deliver that operating leverage. That will continue into 2024. We don't give expenses or underlying EBITDA margin guidance, but you can definitely take away from this, that that's not gonna change.
We're still gonna keep focused on that and look to, at a minimum, hold it, and if not, improve it, depending on the conditions.
All right, great. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Nicholas McGarrigle from Barrenjoey. Your line is open.
Thanks. Maybe just a question around those new advisors that came on in the fourth quarter. Can you just give us a sense of what was driving that large pickup in, in the number of new advisors added?
I don't have analysis. I don't think there's anything out of the ordinary there, Nick. I think that, a couple of comments. We, you know, we've all talked about how the economic conditions, conditions have been a bit challenging or softer, and advisors have been sitting and waiting for investment opportunities or using defensive assets, or, or flows have, had been slower, certainly in quarter 3 and the start of quarter 4. I think it's a result of good prospecting, the sales team, working where they can to build new relationships. There's been a lot of activity in the market with those looking for platform and platform selection. We've had quite a few wins. I think there was a number of distribution agreements in that quarter as well.
I think it's just reflective of business development, and that, you know, there was an opportunity to build relationships whilst it was a little bit softer in terms of flows during that quarter. I don't have any, any large swings or roundabouts that I, that I think are, are noteworthy in terms of makeup or so forth. It will be across self-license, it'll be across boutiques, it'll be across larger groups as well.
All right, great. Thanks. In terms of the EQT timing, I don't know if Kate or yourself can give us just a sense on when should we expect first flows there, and over what time period should the initial AUD 4 billion move over, and has there been any change in the thinking on that AUD 4 billion amount?
It, it's a phased transition, and clearly, we'll also be working with EQT on how they talk to the market about what's happening. Out of respect for them, not gonna give you dates at this point in time. We are working on the project, we're working on some build. There is a third party involved with some trust software. That's progressing well. For us to deliver in 2024. I think, Kitrina, we, we sort of saying most of it's in 2024, probably.
Correct.
Great.
Yeah, anywhere up to three and a half.
3.5, 24. Some will lag over. It's well known in the market that EQT need to exit some of the AET systems that were hosted by Insignia. You should expect to see some first transitions in this half. As and when it's appropriate, EQT are comfortable with testing out the tech and the stack and how it fits together, we'll talk more about it. Certainly working on the first ones in this half.
Great, thank you.
Before we move on to our next participant, if you would like to join the queue to ask a question or a follow-up, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Scott Hudson from MSC. Your line is open.
Yeah. Hi, Andrew. Hey, Kitrina. Just a couple of quick questions. Could you just give us an update on the Myprosperity integration?
Sure. The first piece of work we're doing with Myprosperity in terms of integrating with HUB is building what we call a simple portal. We put that in the announcements on the acquisition, which is about attaching a simple version of Myprosperity to the platform. That's underway in build at the moment. The design's been sorted, and it's underway in build, so I'd expect to be having that in market in the next few months, certainly in this half. T hat was the so it's on track in terms of that objective, in terms of the integration of that. Interestingly, Scott, I know you didn't ask, but, you know I'm shameless.
We're actually seeing great traction and interest in, in Myprosperity and the broader HUB24 group as a result of that solution in terms of what it can provide, particularly in terms of secure document vaults and cybersecurity for advisors. It's allowing us to have discussions and hopefully increase share of wallet with existing clients, and people are very interested in what we're doing with that particular portal. So, it's working from a business development point of view, and the first integration task is well underway.
Thanks. That was my next question, but in terms of the, I guess, the strategy behind the simple portal, is that just to get, I guess, something online and up and running relatively quickly before you expand the portal offering, or how, so what's the longer term strategy there?
Okay. There will be a simple portal with the HUB platform. There, there is the ability to upgrade that to the full Myprosperity capability, so that capability is out there in the market, sold on its own. We don't intend to change that. The simple portal will have integration, it'll create a single sign-on or effectively, over time, replace what we call InvestorHUB, which is the app that investors use, and give access. It will actually embed inside the simple portal, some of the InvestorHUB functionality, so it'll be a hybrid offer. The ability to, to take the full suite of Myprosperity remains and to actually, move forward with that. We're not doing a deeper integration for that. That's the actual Myprosperity product that can be accessible.
Of course, we'll, we'll, over the time, enrich the capability, but the idea is not to provide the full Myprosperity as a bundle with the platform. It's an optional, and it is sold separately in the market currently. You know, I think that some advisors and clients will take that up as an additional service stream and increase our revenue in tech solutions or increase our software's revenue. It's in the platform segment. Sorry, Scott, but, yeah, the strategy is for it to stand on its own and be able to be purchased as the full suite with a simple one integrated with HUB24. Stage two is to integrate that in 12 months' time with other offers like Class and others. Ideally, it could be the front end for customers on Class as well.
Okay. Then could you just expand a little bit about the, I guess, evolving the non-custody reporting to include admin on the platform?
Sure. We've approached non-custody by having large institutional clients like Evans and Ord Minnett, and we do that in a portfolio service on a different tech stack. We've used our HUBconnect infrastructure and a product called Present to allow a single view of wealth. on the platform. That's with feeds from Macquarie Bank, it's with feeds from the platform. It also allows advisors to add other assets in, so you could enter in other assets now, property, other investments, equities, into that asset register to report on and get the combined reporting. We already do that single view of wealth reporting. The next step is to is we will be piloting leveraging some of the capability we've got for those institutional non-custody offers, piloting some non-custody admin.
Not only can you enter them in to the platform for reporting, but we might also do the administration on the well, corporate actions and those sorts of things. It'll be an evolution to doing some non-custody admin. As part of the platform, a very different offer to the portfolio service we have for brokers and high net wealth instos. It's an additional increment to, or additional feature on the platform. We'll be piloting that in the next six months or so, and then based on that, we'll go to market with a full launch.
Have you, settled on a, I guess, a revenue model at this point?
Haven't settled on a revenue model, and we'll talk about that after we've learned from the pilot, but we certainly have ideas about the revenue model. That, that, will come out in due course.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Olivia Coulton from E&P Financial. Your line is open.
Hi, guys. Congrats on a strong result. Just had a question re: the fee mix in the second half. It seemed like there was a decent step down, when you look at that slide where you've got, you know, the walk of, kind of admin and, cash and other, fee growth, in the second half. Was most of that just a function of the higher balances driven by, market performance in the second half?
Yeah, I'll take that one, Olivia. It's probably the thing to do is look in the, on the graph, on the top right-hand side of that graph. With the RBA rate increases that came in in May, June 2022, that took us to the upper end of our cash management fees. It didn't increase. The cash management fee didn't increase past that.
Yeah.
You would have seen those benefits coming in first half 2023, and then they normalized in second half 2023, which is why you didn't see another large uptake in the second half of 2023.
Yeah, I would have thought-
Um-
given the step down as you moved off ANZ onto BOQ, you may have actually seen cash decrease, but it seems like your average cash balance must have lifted a touch to offset the impact of that.
Yeah, that's correct. We did see a bit of a, particularly in Q3, we saw a bit of an uptick in cash balances, and it's really, it's been around the 8-10% throughout most of the year.
Okay. The spot, like when you exited the half, was it fairly similar to the average or the year average? Is there any guidance you can give us on that?
It's been fairly similar to the yearly average. Look, we, we don't give cash numbers, but yeah, it has been fine.
I think the comment I'd make is, it does move around all the time.
Mm. Yeah.
It's a function of money coming onto the platform, and it's a function of trading, not just people parking money in cash. A lot of the cash balance is based on new customers, new inflows come in, coming in in cash, in superannuation, not as assets. Sometimes they take a while to trade. Lifting the hood on that's really difficult. It moves around quite regularly. While you might see, you know, some softening or growth in terms of trends with economic cycles, ours moves around quite a bit given the nature of the book, and we have a predisposition to superannuation flows. Giving you spot is probably not an indicator of what's happening, given the way it works.
Yeah. No, I appreciate that. Just with the pilot product on the, you know, taking some of that reporting functionality that you've got in PAS for the custodial, clients, is there a view that you're going to use a little bit of that to try to push up into, you know, segments of the market where you may not have had as strong a penetration, specifically, I guess, high net worth, et cetera?
Well, we do have penetration high net worth with the Evans and Westpac clients, marquee clients from Xplore, and we have wholesale discretionary accounts in Xplore, which have high net worth capabilities, and we do offer some of those assets in those custody arrangements like bonds and others, and foreign currency on the Linear platform with Xplore. We do have exposure that we haven't had on the HUB24 platform. You know, maybe, but we're, we're there. It is about, you know, providing flexibility for customers and advisors, so that you can have assets off platform and still have them reported, rather than have to crystallize them and move them to custody. It's about increasing the opportunity. People want a single view of wealth.
You know, our view has been, let's help advisers do business the same way, regardless of how assets are held legally. It's extending the utility of the platform in that regard. Yes, it might appeal to that market. It will appeal to other markets as well, but it's not deliberately for high net wealth. It's, it's taking capability we've got and enhancing it and rounding it out into a, into an offer that is about building the platform of the future.
Okay, perfect. No, I appreciate that. Thanks.
Your next question comes from the line of Siraj Ahmed from Citigroup. Your line is open.
Hey, Andrew. Hi, Kitrina. Well, I have three questions. Just first one on the FY25 guidance for FY24?
Just, just clarifying, are you assuming that there's another large transition in fiscal 25 to get to that guidance? Secondly, is it fair to assume there's nothing much from a benefit from Myprosperity in the guidance?
Was the last part benefits from Myprosperity in the guidance? Is that the question?
Yeah. In, in, in terms of flows coming into the core platform because of, you know, the enhanced functionality, servicing, you're not really receiving much from that.
Well, well, I'll, I'll make one comment, then Kitrina can talk about the transition piece. Certainly we aim to deliver a reliable guidance statement, and we'd like to always perform the best we can. In some cases, we've achieved higher than the top end of the range. We certainly don't want to be making bullish promises and having to revise guidance as well. I think it's a good, prudent measure with a big range. It's an addition or an increment to the guidance we had for 2024. You know, from that perspective, it allows for additional transitions, and it also allows us to be in the range, I think, without additional transitions, subject to markets at 5%. There's a variation of possibilities in there.
It's not that it's built on the assumption there's another large transition. We'd love to have one, and we're certainly working on them, and it would put us in, into sort of middle territory of the range, I think. Is that fair?
Yeah, that's completely fair.
Got it. That's clear. Second one, in terms of just Myprosperity, I mean, looking at the accounts, I think AUD 3.7 million in revenue, maybe slightly below what you mentioned at the, when you acquired it. Just, is that organic business still on target for that, you know, sort of doubling in revenue next year, in 2024?
Certainly in the plan, and it's certainly what the business is gunning for. It's early days in 2024, but it's certainly there, Siraj. As Andrew mentioned earlier, the incoming calls and the inquiries that were at it are, you know, indicate that the pipeline's very strong.
Okay. The last one, in terms of, Andrew, you sort of mentioned this, that, you know, change in licensees more recently for one of the largest players. Just keen to understand the impact, right? On, on the one hand, I'm guessing your pipeline's picking up. When do you reckon that comes through in terms of flows, if you, if you win? Secondly, does that have any impact on your white label, white label or private label arrangement that you have? Does that, does that impact the institutional arrangement that you have in terms of potential flows?
Could do. Yet to work through that, Siraj. If we're referring to Insignia, I think there are opportunities there, in that group, and that channel potentially opening up. We do have an existing relationship, and so yeah, working through that. I think the, the sentiment is that if there's a group going to market that's separating from an institution, albeit having, you know, over time, a minority shareholding from that institution, best interests and the need from advisors to have the best products and platforms will prevail. The private label we have with that group is not a full menu service, so we-we'll work through that.
I think the point is that we're seeing shifts in the advice landscape, and that brings opportunities for change and opportunities for us to penetrate markets differently and have access. You know, first part of the question, I see it as opportunity. We have to land it, and we have to work through that other, the, the bigger relationship, and we'll, we'll do that.
Thanks. All right. Thanks, Andrew. Thanks, Catriona.
Your next question comes from the line of Nic Burgess from Ord Minnett. Your line is open.
Yeah, good afternoon, Andrew and Catriona. Thanks very much. Two quick questions. Just firstly, on PARs, looks like the implied revenue performance of PARs dropped off a fair amount in the second half, despite, FUA being up over the year and up slightly half on half. A, is, is that right? That analysis right? Secondly, is there something other than activity levels, dropping off that's impacted that?
No. I would say that the PARS revenue has been consistent, actually, since we first acquired the business. Happy to talk to you offline, Nic, but no, it's been consistent year-on-year. The market doesn't move around too much because it's broadly a lot of the portfolios at the cap of the fee, so it is very consistent.
Yeah, right. There wasn't a second half drop off?
No.
Okay. Second question, just on, your comments around, the EBITDA margin in the platform segment, with the objective of keeping that at a minimum flat and potentially expanding it. Does that include the, the, you know, small dilutive effect from, Myprosperity losses this year, or, or those comments were excluding any, dilutive impact from that?
Certainly it does depend on the market conditions and flows, et cetera. I think we gave sort of guidance when we did the Myprosperity acquisition announcement, that it would be somewhere between AUD 1 million-AUD 1.5 million negative impact to the underlying EBITDA. When we look at the platform segment, absolutely, we look to maintain and where we can improve.
Including those AUD 1.5 million of losses?
Including.
Yeah.
Correct.
Yeah. Okay, that's clear. Thank you.
You have a follow-up question from Nicholas McGarrigle, from Barrenjoey. Your line is open.
Thanks. Just a, probably a boring one. CapEx was AUD 16 million in terms of IT CapEx in FY23. Should we expect that it's a broadly similar amount going forward, or should we think of it as a percentage of revenue? Then I guess the follow-on to that is, should we expect amortization, normalized amortization to track towards that kind of CapEx number over time?
Yeah. Nic, on the capitalization, the AUD 16 million includes the HUB24 and the Class, and it's after the Class change in the policy. Absolutely, that's particularly on the HUB24 side, it's been very, very consistent. Obviously, Class are a full 12 months this year, not expecting large changes there either. AUD 16 million is absolutely a normal, normal run rate that you can expect to see for the combined. And as you say, if that, if that continues, then all things being equal, your depreciation and your capitalization will, you know, normalize out and equal over, you know, over the period of time.
All right. Awesome. Thanks for clarifying. Thank you.
This concludes our Q&A session for today, and I'd like to hand the call back over to Andrew for closing remarks.
Thank you again, everyone. Thank you for great questions. It's been a great year for us. I certainly look forward to seeing people out on the rounds with Catriona. Thank you for your time and interest and support. Enjoy the rest of your day.
This concludes today's conference call. Enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect.