Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Netwealth half year results 1H 2021 conference call. 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 one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Matt Heine, Joint Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning and welcome to the Netwealth Group Limited half year results. This is our second virtual half year results period and hopefully the technology works better than it did last time. Today, I'll be leading you through a company update and I'm joined by Grant Boyle, our Chief Financial Officer, and my Joint Managing Director, Michael Heine, who unfortunately due to a back injury, won't be participating during the bulk of the session, but hopefully will be towards the end for Q&A. If we can move to slide seven, please. As you may have seen from the presentation that was loaded up earlier, Netwealth has had a fantastic half year period. We've delivered a 34.5% NPAT growth on PCP and recorded EBITDA of AUD 40.5 million for the period.
As you'll see from the number below, this has got a very high correlation to our operating net cash flow, also AUD 40.5 million. From a total income of AUD 72.4 million, we've derived an EBITDA margin of 56%, NPAT of AUD 27.6 million and an EPS of AUD 0.113. This morning at the board meeting, the board has declared an interim dividend of AUD 0.0906 per share. Pleasingly, we were also recently recognized as a top 200 company in Forbes Best Under A Billion award. The award is provided to companies with less than $1 billion in U.S. revenue that have demonstrated consistent top and bottom-line growth, low debt, and robust governance. Hopefully you can see that from the results we've just gone through and also from the results that we will continue to walk through.
From a business perspective, our FUA continues to grow significantly, at the end of December, we announced FUA growth to AUD 38.8 billion. As of yesterday, that figure has grown to AUD 40.7 billion, an increase of AUD 1.9 billion in the first six weeks of this calendar year. From a flows perspective over the six months, FUA and inflows increased by AUD 4.5 billion. Our FUM, which consists of our home brand, Netwealth branded managed funds, and the Netwealth managed account, has grown to AUD 9.3 billion, an increase of AUD 1.5 billion in net flows. The managed account, which is a key product and continuing to drive significant growth across the business, has grown to AUD 7.6 billion, an increase for the half of AUD 1.3 billion. Other notable events during the six-month period is we announced a strategic investment in Xeppo, which I'll touch on later in the presentation.
We've seen an increase in our earn per account of 6.5%, from AUD 1,666 in the first year up AUD 102. Our average account size over the period has also increased to AUD 440,000 at the December 31st. Our market share continues to grow and currently sits at 4.1%. Following on from that, you can see a quick snapshot of how the industry is tracking. The chart on the left-hand side shows the increase in our market share from 2.9% - 4.1% over the period. More importantly, it shows how the large incumbent platforms in many cases are going backwards while specialist platforms continue to grow. On the right-hand side, AUD 9.5 billion growth over the 12 months to the end of September, which has put Netwealth into the first place position for top inflows for the tenth consecutive quarter.
Again, this shows a very different story from those specialist platforms that continue to grow and the incumbents. If we can please move to page 11. The growth continues and has been very strong for many years now and as we've explained on a number of occasions, the beautiful thing about our growth is that a lot of that growth actually comes from existing clients that continue to move new clients onto the platform. You'll see that our total growth for the half year of AUD 7.3 billion, which includes net flows and market movement, represents a 23.2% growth. Of that, 83% or AUD 6.1 billion of it came from existing advisers, I mentioned, putting new business on. The green bar represents the large transition that continues to move across, as well as other smaller ones. If we can please move to the next slide.
Looking forward and from a strategic perspective, Netwealth is very focused on a number of significant trends that we see are shaping and have shaped the wealth management industry in the last couple of years, and we believe over the next five years. There's absolutely no doubt that the COVID experience over the last 6- 12 months has driven digital adoption significantly, and fast-tracked it, in many cases, five, maybe 10 years. What that means as a business and also as a platform, is that we need to be very focused on understanding what consumers are using, how they're using it, and what their expectations are from their financial services firms. To this end, I'll talk to the strategy in place that we're looking to adopt to make sure that we harness that major trend.
That's the age of the digital client, of the customer, and where customers are now expecting or benchmarking our service and experience they have with us against the world's largest tech companies. Equally, a global trend that we're seeing play out in Australia is that we're seeing many financial advisers and wealth professionals moving from investment experts to wealth coaches, where they'll look to partner or outsource the investment piece and focus on the strategic advice that they can provide to their clients. This lends itself well to MDA solutions as well as Decimal solutions, and there's no doubt that that's a big part of the growth within our managed account product. We're also seeing a proliferation of advice technologies, where advice firms and clients are using an increasing number of tech solutions to basically support their service delivery and their investment propositions.
As part of that, Netwealth is constantly looking at how we can make sure that we are not only part of that ecosystem, but can continue to contribute to the ecosystem and deliver new services and products to help advisors deliver better advice to their clients. When you look at all of those different trends, the modern advice delivery model continues to change rapidly. Margins are being squeezed across the board, from advisors through to fund managers and platforms, and everyone's looking at how they can provide a more modern, better digital experience and grow those margins over time. Moving to slide 13, please. To counteract this, we've been embarking on a multi-year strategy to expand the notion of what a traditional platform can do. We've critically examined all the different parts of our business, and we're looking at where the opportunities are for the future.
A big part of our future, not dissimilar to many other companies, is that data will play a critical role. We're really looking to put client data and also external data at the center of everything that we do. It will inform business decisions. It will inform advisor decisions. It'll help us deliver actionable insights to our clients, and also make sure that we're able to deliver a rich and engaging experience that caters to not only a client's platform assets, but their whole of wealth, whether that's their property, external banking, or data from other sources. Sitting around our data strategy is our flagship wealth strategy, which continues to prosper and will continue to be the major engine room for our future growth.
This includes products such as our investment wrap, the Wealth Accelerator, our super Wealth Accelerator product, our managed accounts touched on a number of times, and our home brand Netwealth branded managed funds, which I'll also come back to. Sitting around that is our technology solutions, which include the recently released XWrap, which allows clients and advisors to cater for their off-platform non-custodial assets, administer and report on them. This is a new product that was released back in September after being in beta for a couple of years and has been exceptionally well received by the industry. We're also looking to roll out a mobile app, and a number of other services. If we can move to slide 14, please. From a strategic initiative perspective, not surprisingly, many of them tie back to our broader strategy. Our first big initiative was the investment into Xeppo.
Xeppo is a fintech data analytics provider that aggregates data from a whole range of different sources to consolidate accounting, mortgage, wealth, and CRM information into a single client view. I'll show you what that looks like shortly. As I touched on, XWrap was launched. Allows us to really spearhead the high net worth market, as well as assets that belong to mainstream retail clients, such as property. In the next half, we'll be launching a brand-new mobile experience for iOS and Android that's going to significantly improve the client experience. Importantly, with integrations with Xeppo and other third-party providers, provide additional whole of wealth reporting for clients, looking at efficiency and also engagement.
From our flagship wealth perspective, during the period after the successful launch of our new premium product, which specifically caters to the high net worth, ultra-high net worth, and philanthropic sector, we've now got 3,447 premium accounts at the end of December, which pleasingly in the half grew by 817 accounts. There was huge demand for this product, as you can see from those numbers, and it's continuing to grow rapidly. As part of our GSS or home brand managed fund strategy, we're also delighted to launch two new active funds with Magellan. Netwealth now offers a Netwealth version of the Magellan Infrastructure Fund and also the Magellan Global Fund. We'll look to continually roll out other mandate funds throughout the year with the next couple of strategies being focused on domestic managers. If we can move to slide 15, please.
Going back to our strategic investment in Xeppo to try and explain in a little bit more detail what it does. Xeppo, as I mentioned, is a fintech data aggregation platform where effectively it connects to more than 26 different enterprise solutions. That could be Xero, MYOB, companies like Class, Iress, AFG Finance and Mortgage platforms, Moneysoft, OPEX, or Microsoft SharePoint. Every night, it takes that data and using an API connection, matches that client data to individual clients, syncs it, and then normalizes it. All of that data across all of those different systems will then create a single client record, which can then be fed up into a variety of different software solutions. You might want to use that client information in your marketing system, such as Mailchimp.
You might use the Xeppo CRM or workflow, push and pull documents into SharePoint, use Power BI to get very sophisticated reporting across the licensee or the practice, or in the future, log into your Netwealth client portal and be able to view your accounting information or information from other platforms. It's a very, very powerful system, and pleasingly, the take-up by existing Netwealth clients has been strong, and the pipeline for Xeppo of clients looking to adopt the solution both as a data provider but also as a CRM provider, continues to be incredibly encouraging. We move to page 16, please. Appreciate this is a little bit hard to see, but this is a couple of the views that as a Xeppo user, you might expect to see when you log in either as a practice or as an advisor or a licensee.
What you can see here is all of those different data sources from the 26 different providers, normalized, consolidated, and displayed into simple dashboards. On the left-hand side as a practice, you'll be able to see what debtors are outstanding, what fees are being earned, brokerage, total revenue across the firm. At the client level, you'll be able to see their total net worth, various bank accounts, credit cards, loans, properties, and investments, as well as their net profit from accounting systems such as MYOB or Xero. Information from their SMSF accounting services, such as Class. It's incredibly powerful. We've not seen another system in the market that can do nearly what Xeppo does. Our additional investment will allow them to fast-track many of the plans over the next 12, 13 months, including that tight integration with Netwealth, which we're extremely excited by.
Turning to page 17, please. Finally, before I hand over to Grant Boyle, our CFO, to go through the numbers in a bit more detail. Yesterday, we're really pleased to announce that we've had another good year, another award-winning year. Yesterday, in the Investment Trends Platform Benchmarking Report, we were delighted to see that we were number one or won four out of six categories. Whilst we missed out on the top spot by 0.1%, we're extremely proud of what we've achieved over the last 12 months. We've got a fantastic pipeline of new developments due over the next six to 12 months. We remain the number one platform for overall satisfaction, having won that for the ninth year in a row last year. Chant West has nominated Netwealth or awarded Netwealth as the best advice product of the year for the last three years.
I mentioned the Forbes Best Under A Billion award earlier. It's been a good year. We're incredibly excited about what's coming up over the next six months and happy to take questions at the end. Handing over to you, please, Grant.
Yeah, thanks, Matt. Matt summarized some of the. Just want to mute your phone, please. Matt summarized some of the key metrics when he was doing his update. They're summarized on slide 19. We're very pleased to be able to report that we've successfully grown across all of our key profit loss metrics, with strong growth across platform revenue, EBITDA, and the net profit before and after tax. This slide summarizes the improvement when compared to the prior year. Platform revenue was at AUD 71.2 million for the first half, which is up 24.1%, and that was predominantly driven by the huge increase in our funds under administration, which grew by 36% over that same period. The majority of our revenue continues to be recurring in nature and therefore is relatively predictable and stable.
Pleasingly in the first half, transaction fees were actually a significant and increasing revenue source. This was due to the strong trading volumes and the additional revenue streams and improving supply margins which come with our increased scale. Operating expenses over the same period were increased by 15.8%, which is delivering good operating leverage, which is flowing through to that EBITDA margin. As flagged in the previous updates, we are continuing to increase our investment in the technology teams to ensure that we have one eye on the future and to maximize the current growth opportunity, and that we continue to lead the market for growth rates, service, and functionality. Investment, obviously, is key to achieving that objective. We continue to expense all of our internal development costs, so there's no capitalization of our IT resources. None of that's capitalized on the balance sheet.
Our EBITDA for the first half was AUD 40.5 million, that's 30.1% up on the prior comparative period and a very healthy 56% EBITDA margin, which Matt obviously mentioned before. In the first half, there is no adjustments to our statutory profits, so our NPAT, and there's no underlying adjustments between the two, so there's no reconciling items this year. Underlying earnings per share for the first half was AUD 0.113 per share, we declared an interim dividend today, as Matt mentioned, of AUD 0.0906 per share, which is fully franked. Just to summarize, very strong continued growth. We've improved our already attractive EBITDA margins, this is flowing through to dividends to our shareholders. Just moving ahead to slide 20. The next slide, you've seen pretty much most of these numbers previously as they're included in our operating update.
I won't dwell too much on them, but one number to call out again is the FUA growth, which increased by AUD 10.3 billion for the last 12 months for the calendar year. As mentioned before, AUD 4.5 billion of the first half growth was in net FUA flows. Our average account size continues to increase due to our success in the high-value financial service practices. Pleasingly, our platform revenue per account also has continued to increase, as discussed before. You'd be aware that this is a very key metric for us, and it's increased to AUD 1,666 per account, and I'll expand on that in the next slide. This next slide 21, has got three charts, which would be familiar to many of you that have been following us for a while. The top chart on the right-hand side sets out the average account size increasing trend.
The middle chart on the right side sets out the revenue per account, that's increasing gradually. At the bottom is the basis points. We obviously have one eye on the basis points, but we're more focused on the revenue per account. One of the drivers of that, apart from the average account size increasing, has been some of the reductions in the admin fee that many of you would be aware of. In the second half, there'll be some further reductions in our admin fee as the full impact of the pricing reductions comes through in the second half, which we've mentioned in previous announcements. Moving ahead to slide 22. This is an interesting slide in that it sort of sets out what the components of our revenue are.
When we IPO'd, the admin fees was in excess of 60%, I think 61% from memory. That's now down at 49%, and that's a function of a couple of things. One, there has been some admin fee pressure, clearly. Pleasingly, we've been able to continue to increase the other revenue sources and develop ancillaries and transaction fees. The AUD value and the percentage of transaction fees in the first half was at 12% of our platform revenue, which is up from 6% in the equivalent period last year. That's certainly helped cushion some of the impacts of the reductions in our cash fee margins. You'd be aware that the RBA have now made a couple of cuts over the last 12 months, which has taken 40 basis points off what was the preexisting margin for cash.
Certainly, the increase in the transaction fees has really helped cushion some of that pressure or fill the void that some of the cash reductions has caused. Moving into slide 23. This is just a slide that sets out our costs. Nothing unusual here in terms of what the composition is. As you'd expect, the main driver of our cost is people. We added 65 roles in the calendar year to December 2020, which is a pretty, I think, impressive effort given the COVID environment that we're in. We've continued to onboard our staff, even though they were working remotely. That's resulted in an increase in our expenses of 15.8%, which obviously is significantly less than the increase over the prior comparative period for revenue, which is at 24%.
Just on the COVID, as we, I think in previous updates, we were able to adjust to remote working pretty smoothly. The impact expenses actually was pretty minimal. We did actually save some money on premises and travel and marketing, and we were able to continue to onboard staff, which was obviously important as we were continuing to grow. Just giving a bit more information around where we hired people on slide 24. We added 32 staff in the first half, and 25 of those staff were in the technology team. We also took out the product development and sales teams to some degree and adding six resources. Really pleasingly, the operations teams actually were able to get. Well, they demonstrated their scalability.
Whilst we added AUD 4.5 billion in net flows, the actual operations team reduced by three over the first half. That really does demonstrate the incredible scalability that we now have, despite our very significant growth. Moving it to slide 25, which is my final slide, just to summarize again, that we've had a very strong first half. There's a strong cost management, really good operating leverage. We've got EBITDA margin in the first half of 56%, strong correlation, low working capital requirements for the business. We've had limited capital expenditure, and the internal software and product maintenance enhancements there continued to be expense. That means we've better quality of earnings as we've got no potential for impairment in the future. Really got a strong position. With that, I'll hand over to Matt, who'll summarize the business highlights and provide an operating outlook.
Thanks, Grant. As mentioned, I won't spend a lot of time rehashing what we've just heard. It has been a fantastic year. As you would have seen, we have got a very strong track record of growth in both FUA growth, fund growth, revenue, and also profitability, and we've shown this over many, many years. A big part of that is our continued focus on innovation and platform technology as well as service. We're delighted that we continue to not only invest into the core platform, but also be able to build out and deliver new products and services to our clients that not only help them deliver advice and achieve better financial outcomes, but also help diversify our revenue streams.
As mentioned, we're very excited about our strategic investment in Xeppo and believe that's going to really help build the moat around the business and allow us to provide new products and services that aren't broadly available in the industry. We are also very fortunate in that in addition to our growth and organic growth, we are benefiting from significant industry trends. The market is fragmenting and continues to fragment at a rate of knots. We certainly are in prime position to benefit from that as advisors look to move licensees, shift onto more contemporary platforms, and rebuild their value propositions. We are very focused on, as Grant mentioned, making sure that we do continue to invest in the future.
Platforms are evolving rapidly. For us to make sure that we keep our competitive edge, we need to invest into the new technology that's been discussed. Typically, that involves headcount, Grant showed you where the growth is across the business. Equally, though, we are also focused on making sure that with the growth that we can backfill and ensure that we're set for the future when it comes to service delivery. A lot of the developments that we've made over the last six months have also been around enhancing our overall service proposition, adding live chat features to the platform, as well as knowledge centers to help our customers find the information quickly and easily when they want to. We have exceptional cash generation. As Grant mentioned, we don't capitalize. Therefore, our flow is straight through. We're extremely profitable. Importantly, in this environment, we have no debt.
We've managed to provide a good return to shareholders with a fully franked interim dividend of AUD 0.0906 per share. Looking forward, we're going to be continuing to do much of the same. If you can please move to page 28. We will absolutely continue to benefit from the disruption in the market. The sales team is actively working to source new opportunities. Our pipeline is extremely healthy, and we don't see that slowing down in the foreseeable future. As a result of that, not surprisingly, we expect to increase market share. However, that's never our primary objective. We are about profitable growth. Net flows next year, we've increased our guidance slightly from AUD 8 billion to somewhere between AUD 8.5 billion-AUD 9 billion.
A big part of this, in addition to growing our core client segments, mass affluent, we are benefiting from the growth in affluent and high-net-worth individuals. The premium product launched back in March underpins much of that success. New pricing was announced back in March. Whilst clients have been progressively moving to that new pricing since it was announced back then, we have also, on the 1st of January, fully transitioned the back book for anyone that hadn't taken advantage of the new pricing, and that is now being executed and in place. As a result of that, we don't expect our administration fee income to increase significantly for the second half compared to the first half. Equally, the reduction in pooled cash transaction account and the current reduction in interest rates, which we've absorbed, will reduce ancillary revenues from the RBA announcement date.
Moving to page 29, please. We will be continuing to invest into our IT. We've got a significant number of projects on the go that we're wanting to get completed, including the continued enhancement of XWrap and also our new mobile technology. Over the last six months, we added 25 additional headcount. We're looking at not only the new features, but also looking at how we can continue to enhance our operational efficiency and scalability. As you've seen, our growth has been substantial, and it's really important that we can make sure that our technology is always looking forward and able to cope with the growth. We're building synergies not only with Xeppo, but we're also looking at a number of third-party relationships where we can extend our offering through their technology via APIs. That was rolled out in late December and will continue to be enhanced.
As mentioned back on the summary, we remain in a very strong financial position, which is supported by a diverse and robust sales and transition pipeline. We remain very profitable, and we've got very strong EBITDA margins. As you would have heard now multiple times, there's a very high correlation between EBITDA and the operating cash flow resulting in that exceptional cash generation. Our revenue has a very high level of recurring revenue. That means that it's very predictable, which particularly in the volatile markets, and also with the backdrop that we're living through, we believe is very important. Importantly, we've got very low CapEx, we have no debt, and we've also got significant cash reserves. On that note, I'd like to thank you for listening, and we have time to take question and answers from anyone on the call.
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. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Siraj Ahmed from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Matt and Grant. Can you hear me okay?
We can.
All right, great. Solid result. Three questions from me. First one, just an update for as of February 15th , can you let us know what that means by flows versus market movement? Our estimate is around AUD 1 billion in flows. Is that fair?
We're not giving out the flow number at this stage. We can provide that in the next quarterly update. Grant, did you want to add to that?
Well answered.
Okay. I guess, maybe the actual question is, your flows, there is seasonality in flows, right? Is there anything that we should be thinking about from the fact that flows could slow down in the fourth quarter or something that you are seeing?
Yeah. We provide an indication that we believe flows for the full year will be between AUD 8.5 billion and AUD 9 billion . That is our best estimate and where we think they will be. We don't believe any reason that that will change.
All right. Second question, just on admin fee guidance. Can you just clarify, does that assume flow growing? I mean, is that including flow growth into the second half, the guidance on admin fee and being flat half on half?
Grant, did you want to take that?
Yeah, sure. It does include that, where basically we're saying that we think based on the impact of reductions that came through in January, that that will offset the full growth that we will have.
Sure, Grant. Does that essentially mean that a lot of clients did not move voluntarily and had a big chunk really move on January first? Is that the way to think about it?
When we made the change to the fee, we obviously gave the option for clients to move earlier. We made it very easy for them. We provided a calculator, but we don't really control the speed, so we were actually surprised. Some groups took it up really quickly. Others didn't take advantage of the changes, so we moved them on the January 1st. It's fair to say, less took advantage of it than I expected, but it's pretty hard to predict the adviser behavior.
Grant, I'll might just add to that, just as you know, the repricing's been occurring over multiple years, so clients have been moving to wholesale rates for a period of time now, not just from the March 1st.
Sure. Thanks. Last one. EBITDA margins, very strong margin expansion. Is the OpEx base in for staff represented? I'm sure there's a bit of growth, but should we be thinking there's a meaningful step up from that? Given admin fee and cash margins coming down, how should we think about the EBITDA margins going into H?
Well, yes. You happy for me to take on that?
Yeah, absolutely.
Certainly as we flagged, we have hired significant staff in the first half in the technology area. I can't see that slowing down over the next short period. We're pretty committed to continuing to invest. You need to assume that there will be continued to be growth in our operating expenses. We haven't given specific guidance on what that will be, but it's the rate of growth that we have and the amount of functionality that we want to continue to build means that we'll continue to build on that. In terms of the EBITDA margin for the second half, there are some headwinds on the revenue that we've spoken about. The fact that admin fees aren't going to increase, and the cash balance has come down from where it was at the start of the year.
We've given out quarterly updates on that, so people who should be able to plot where the cash balance has been so that will have a negative impact on ancillaries on that line. Haven't given you the final answer, but obviously there's some things that are going to impact that EBITDA margin in the second half that you need to be aware of.
Thanks. I'll jump off line. Thanks, Grant. Thanks, Matt.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Any other questions?
Your next question comes from Bob Chen from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning, guys. Just a couple of questions from me. Obviously, we saw a pretty strong increase in transaction-based revenues over the half. How has that been tracking to date in the second half?
Yeah. We haven't obviously given a trading update on revenue in the second half, but I think the major driver of our transaction fees is market activity. You guys should be aware where is ASX in terms of what's happening in terms of the markets. If there's a lot of volatility there are transactions, and then you've got some seasonal factors where January can be slower than other months just due to seasonal factors. There's nothing really at this stage that we've given updates on in terms of our transaction volumes. You're just going to have to look at the overall market and assume that our volumes will be similar than the overall market activity. The other thing that impacts our transaction fees, apart from those overall market levels, is the activities of our model managers and our managed accounts.
Some of the transaction volumes come from that, and clearly our managed account has grown significantly. It's subject to when the model managers decide to rebalance. We obviously earn some money when the managed accounts models are rebalanced, so that's the other driver.
Okay, perfect. Then just in terms of the pipeline of onboarding more advisers, I think you made some high-level commentary that the pipeline's strong, can you talk a little bit about that in the context of comparing it to how you tracked last year?
The slides that I skipped over back in the deck was we added 136 advisors in the six months. We're seeing a significant number of new advisors coming onto the platform, trialing us for the first time, and also committing to transitions. Comparing it to previous periods, look, it's always pretty busy. You would have seen that the flows have been fairly consistent over the last couple of years. It is very healthy as far as the direct comparison, I'd say on par.
Okay, great. Just a question on the sort of opportunity there with Xeppo. Is there any sort of revenues attached to rolling that out more broadly?
Yeah. With Xeppo, firstly, it gives us great reach into the accounting market, and we're seeing a convergence of accounting and wealth firms. That puts us in a really good position to go and provide a valuable solution to those firms. When we do the integration and roll out the new Netwealth mobile experience, there will be a fee attached to that. Practices will get a base product for free, but if they look to upgrade over time and use some of the more professional or pro features, there'll be a fee associated with that. That's very much part of our SaaS strategy and also user-pays, where the people or the person getting the benefit of that particular technology or product will pay for it.
Okay, great. What was the timeline onto rolling that out?
Integration starts in the next six to eight weeks.
All right, great. Thanks, guys.
Pleasure. Any more questions?
Thank you. Your next question comes from Simon Fitzgerald from Evans. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thank you very much for taking my questions. The first one, I was just wanting to get a little bit more clarity in terms of XWrap, in terms of a little bit more about your ambitions in the non-custody area, and how we should think about fees in that sort of category going forward, just given that you might see a bit of an additional mix in terms of that non-custody versus custody ownership there.
Yeah, absolutely. XWrap's a really important part of the platform moving forward. Certainly, in some of the recent research, we're seeing advisors actively seeking out platforms that offer it as a solution. The service has been built out and designed to cater for the non-custody of platform assets, which we believe in a high net worth firm will typically account for somewhere between 20% and 25% of a client's total portfolio. We're certainly not looking to cannibalize our existing business, and it really hasn't been designed to administer or support, I guess, your more traditional assets. It's for the weird and wonderful esoteric assets, overseas hedge funds, foreign currencies. We charge AUD 15 a month for that service. There's a minimum fee per practice to ensure that we can provide the training and support for XWrap, which is obviously new and requires additional support.
Okay, that's fair. The second question just relates to the cash management, the decrease of the percentage of revenue, so 55% of 49%. Is that mainly to do with the decrease of earnings on the cash accounts, which we can attribute to the RBA rate changes?
No, I would say it's probably mainly not. The first rate change was largely offset by increased balances over that period because of the volatility.
Yeah.
For a while, that was cushioned. We started the year with, I think it was 10% of the FUM in cash balances, so we got off to a good start. The second rate cut, as you'd know, wasn't till November. I'd say the mix is really around increasing the transaction fees and slight reductions in the overall percentage of admin fees.
Essentially, with the rate reductions in, we're going to see that wash through in the second half, et cetera?
Sorry, I just missed that.
With the rate reductions, we'll see those wash through in the second half.
Correct.
Yeah. Just more of a structural question around those cash accounts. I'm not as familiar with this, but I know that we have seen a decrease over time, or at least down to that 7%, which was the last level that you spoke about. How much further can an advisor take that from a structural basis? There would have to be a certain level that must be maintained to pay for fees, to pay for potential pensions, et cetera, and normal transactions. What is the lowest that that could possibly go that a financial advisor could manage that safely?
It's an interesting thing in that we've got so many accounts on there, and they've all got different range of account balances that go from the very minimum, which is 1% of an account you've got the need to retain in a cash account in order to cover the admin fee and advisor fees. We mandate that. There's very few accounts that would have that percentage there.
The majority of the accounts obviously have something in excess of 7%, and that does fluctuate depending on what the market cycle is. Certainly, there's a difference between the pension or the superannuation product and the wrap account. If you've got a wrap account, you have options to move most or some of your cash to other cash options off platform. The wrap accounts typically have a lower average accounts, whereas if you're in a super fund, you've got superannuation contributions coming in there, which can sit in an account until they're invested. Also, certain clients are in pension mode, so they might have a year's worth of income that they need to retain there. There's lots of different factors in there.
You've also got when there's times of big inflows coming in, that can sometimes sit in cash for a week or two while it gets allocated out. You've got buys and sells when there's lots of market activity. Sometimes if there's times of volatility, it can sit on the side while people decide what they want to do with it. There's lots of different factors in there that drive it, but it certainly has never gone lower than those 7% for us.
Yeah.
Some other platforms might have lower balances, but certainly that's been our experience.
Yeah. Certainly through market cycles as well. If the markets are running strongly, we tend to see cash reduce, and when volatility creeps back or people are worried about the market, cash reserves increase, which I'm sure you see in your own business.
Yep. No, that's fair enough. Just one final question, again, on the sort of cash accounts. Just given all the liquidity in the system, are you confident that deposit spreads are going to hold? We're sort of seeing levels of 1.2% above RBA rates for platforms. I'm interested to know from your perspective, how long that can hold, just given all the liquidity in the system.
Yes. It's difficult to know where rates are going, but certainly, for all the reasons that we've just talked about, people are holding cash in their accounts, and we've got no plans to change our rates at this stage.
Yeah, I meant the rates offered by your bankers that essentially offer you the deposit rates above the RBA rate. Have you had any comments about how sustainable those are?
We haven't seen any comments really on that. I think there's a couple of obviously different articles floating around, at this stage, we've got the current rate locked in and as you know, it's a 12-month contract.
Yep.
We haven't been provided any change to that.
Excellent. Very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We now have a follow-up question from Siraj Ahmed from Citi. Please go ahead.
Thanks. A few more questions. Just first thing, Grant, you mentioned the transaction fees. Can I just confirm, I think you were looking to net the transactions. Has that been done? Have you gone through the projects? Is there any benefit from that in the first half?
No, that hasn't been introduced as yet. We're still targeting that for the second half.
Okay. There could still be benefits from that coming through. Great. Looking at slide 11, seems like there's a pickup in the contribution from existing members. Can you just talk to that? This is the FUA waterfall chart.
Yeah. It looks like that, doesn't it? I looked at that chart and had to delve a bit deeper into those numbers myself. That's a full growth chart. Because there's a component of market movement there for the existing clients. As we get bigger, the existing accounts obviously gets bigger by definition. Therefore, if the market increases, then that flows through into that chart. Most of that's the market movement for, or just about all that will be the market movement for the existing accounts.
Okay. That makes sense. I was just wondering whether there's a pickup in transitions. Two more. Can you just confirm, the cash account, you're saying that the supplier has not reduced pricing, it's still a 12-month notice period?
Yeah. With that, as Matt said, we've got 12 months notice. I think if we were given that notice, we'd have to, potentially, I imagine, we would let the market know, given it's market sensitive. Certainly, that hasn't happened to date.
Got it. Just last thing. One for Matt. Matt, you have XWrap, you have these SaaS-based revenue that you want to drive. Can you give us an indication of where, these are all incremental. Is there a target for three to five years that you want, if you look at the revenue pie or the revenue chart that you have, where these revenue streams should be coming through as a percentage of overall revenue?
Not a three to five year target per se. I think it's more just a strategy where we're looking to, A, through XWrap, bring more money onto the platform because we're able to support a broader range of assets, and therefore it's a more complete solution for advising clients. Equally, we've continued to deliver new revenue streams. That's the latest one, and there are still other ones that we're exploring and hope to implement over the next 12-18 months.
Got it. Thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Cordukes from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. Just a question on the EBITDA margin. You've talked in the past that you consider a good EBITDA margin for a business like yours of around 50%. Appreciate there's some revenue margin headwind in the second half, but you also talked that you're starting to get some scale over some of those operating expenses. Looking beyond, is that comment still valid or are we going to see EBITDA margin expansion as you really get the benefits of scale?
Grant, do you want that one?
Thanks, Matt. We do think EBITDA margin of 50% is a very attractive margin. We've been pretty consistent with that. If we can maintain it in around that 50%, we're very comfortable. First half was really strong. We're not changing our line in terms of what we think the long-term margin is. There's too many factors that affect it to plan too far ahead. At this stage, we're not going to update our line on that, and we think anything around the 50% EBITDA margin is very strong.
Yeah. Just a follow-up. If you do start to get scale benefits, you have on occasion given back a little bit to customers, for example, the repricing that you've just done. If you're thinking that that's still a good EBITDA margin, if you do get scale, will you hold onto it or do you think you could try and entrench your moat even more?
Yeah. There's a couple of different levers. Obviously, if we were to keep it around that 50%, clearly as you get scale, that EBITDA margin does start to creep up. As you've mentioned, we can give that back through fee discounts, which we have recently done through the repricing and also through our wholesale rate card to larger advice groups. Equally, we can also look to spend on additional IT to build our new product such as XWrap or the mobile app to further build that moat. It's not always going to be both at different times, depending on where we think the market's heading and what we need to do. We could pull on either of those levers or let it grow.
All right. That is very helpful. Just maybe one more. You talked about teaming up with some third-party providers in your outlook statements that you rolled out in December. Can you provide a bit more color around those?
Yeah. We've been focusing on developing our API. API allows you to effectively push and pull data between different systems in a very efficient and secure way. Xeppo clearly is a natural third-party provider that will be looking to provide things like client detail updates, portfolio data, transaction data, those sort of things. Equally, there's tools such as Financial Simplicity, which we're out talking to and doing some work with at the moment, that provide a third-party model portfolio tool. We provide data into FactSet. There's a huge number of integrations that we already have. As advisors find new systems and services they want to access, it's really important that we can provide the integration to make it as seamless and easy for them as possible.
There's a lot of existing integrations, but there's also a lot of new products and services coming onto the market all the time that advisors are adopting.
Okay, thanks very much.
If you think sort of a marketplace like a Xero or a MYOB.
Okay.
Thank you. Your next question is a follow-up question from Siraj Ahmed from Citi. Please go ahead.
Sorry, I just have one more question. Matt, I think I heard you say that you missed out on the number one spot on Investment Trends. Can you just clarify that? Who actually won that and where you slipped?
Yeah. Because of the fact that it's a specialist report, I can't give out the number one, although I'm sure you'll find out fairly soon. We missed it by 0.1%, which is clearly disappointing given that we did so well in four out of the six categories. Basically, it was through that integration piece that we slipped a little bit, but we're pretty confident that our offer is still market-leading. As you'd expect, we'd be working even harder to make sure we move back into number one.
You're saying that you missed on the integration piece. Could you just clarify what that is?
Yeah. There's a number of different categories and weightings that are applied to platforms. On the integration weighting, whilst we did well, the party that came first did better, and as a result, pipped us at the post by 0.1% out of, obviously, 100.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Nick Burgess from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Good morning, gentlemen. Just one quick question. The fee paying FUA percentage at 63.4 for the half, could you just clarify the key drivers on that, why that moves up and down? Secondly, do you have a particular view that that is a largely stable number or it's trending in a particular direction?
Grant, do you want to take that?
Yeah, happy to. Obviously, we've got a fee cap on our admin fees, which traditionally, well, going back a few years, was at AUD 1 million. Just with that cap, if you've got a AUD 2 million account, and the fee cap is AUD 1 million, obviously, you've got AUD 0.50 fee paying FUA percentage. We changed our retail rate card to have a cap at AUD 2.5 million, and actually, just about every rate card out there has now got a cap at AUD 2.5 million. That means that any of the clients that moved across, that percentage would actually change, even though there's no fundamental change to the account itself. That has driven it.
That aside, the major driver of fee paying fee is that if you've got larger accounts, they're going to have a lower admin fee paying FUA percentage. If we bring on a lot of larger high-net-worth groups, you'd see that fee paying FUA percentage reduce. If you've got an AUD 20 million account, only, got to do the maths on that, a small percentage of that would be fee paying. The revenue that you're getting on that account is still very strong because it's going to get the capped out admin fee, and yet they typically have really good ancillaries. They're some of the factors that affect it.
The other thing that does occasionally impact the fee paying FUA percentage is market movement, because when the market goes up by 20% in a year, any of the fee that's above the cap doesn't actually affect our admin fees because it's already capped out. The same happens on the way down. That dilutes the impact of equity market movements because of the percentage of our funds under administration that isn't getting charged admin fees. They're a few of the drivers. It does go up and down. Certainly, when markets go up, the fee paying FUA percentage will go down for the reason I just highlighted.
With the focus on high net worth, which you talked about in the presentation, is it fair to assume that that number trends down over time as you grow in that segment?
Well, even though we're going to focus on the high net worth groups, we're certainly going to focus on lots of normal non-high net worth groups. It's just going to depend on the mix. Obviously, this last year, we've been onboarding a pretty big transition, which is a high net worth group, and we've been really successful with a number of other clients in the same space. Equally, we've brought on a lot of practices that have got normal everyday Australian accounts that have got significantly less balances. It's just going to depend on the mix. If we are really successful in the high net worth space, you'd expect that fee paying FUA percentage to reduce.
Yeah. I might just add to that, though, that whilst the basis points on the large accounts don't look great, the ancillary revenues really do become very important and the earn per account on the larger accounts, given the nature of the products and services, trading activity, et cetera, make them very desirable.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Matt Heine for closing remarks.
Thanks very much. Thank you to everyone that's joined the call today. We're really pleased with the results and looking forward to another great six months. Look forward to catching up soon. Thank you very much.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.