Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Netwealth Group Limited annual results FY 2023 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 1 on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Matt Heine, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us this morning for our FY23 business and financial highlights. My name's Matt Heine. I'm the CEO and Managing Director of Netwealth, and I'm joined by Grant Boyle, our Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we're going to be going through the financial year 2023 business results. We'll be giving a brief strategy and product update, an update on corporate sustainability, and then I'll be handing over to Grant Boyle to go through the financial performance in detail. We'll finish with a brief outlook statement and also be handing over to questions at the end, so please make sure to jump in the queue. Before we start, however, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands that we work and live on.
We are presenting today from Sydney on the lands of the traditional owners of the Gadigal people of the Eora nations. We celebrate the stories, culture, and traditions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of all nations, and pay our respects to the elders past, present, and future. If we turn to page 7, a quick summary of our results for year, for the year. I think it's fair to say that the last financial year was certainly challenging in many regards. We had market volatility, uncertainty, and persistent inflation, which led to increased rapid increases in interest rates. There was definitely poor investor sentiment throughout the year. However, despite all of this, we are really pleased to have delivered what we believe is to be an excellent result.
It was a year of many milestones, and we surpassed many key metrics along the way. Our revenue for the year was AUD 214.7 million, an increase of 21.6%, or AUD 38.1 million. For the first time, we exceeded EBITDA, exceeded AUD 100 million of EBITDA, recording AUD 100.7 million. Again, this is an increase of 18.4%, with growth of AUD 15.7 million. We reported AUD 67.2 million of NPAT, a growth of 20.9% or AUD 11.6 million, and the number of accounts that we onboarded onto the platform grew by 10.3% to a total of 127,507.
We'll talk about our position as the number one platform in a few slides, but from a funds under administration perspective, we had a great year, despite many of the headwinds that we just touched on. Our FUA grew by AUD 14.6 billion for the year, which included AUD 9.9 billion of net inflows, and finished at AUD 70.3 billion or a 26.3% increase. As has become customary, our current FUA, as of yesterday, was AUD 72.2 billion, which shows a strong start to the year. Our total funds under management, so that is, is our managed fund products as well as our managed account, exceeded AUD 16 billion with AUD 2 billion inflows.
As of today, our managed account, which is a primary driver of, of current and future growth, has exceeded AUD 14 billion. We've delivered on a range of our strategic initiatives that we set out and talked about, 12 months ago, and our service levels continue to be very strong, and as you will see, considered the best in industry, with phone calls, chats, et cetera, being answered rapidly, and customer service being a continued focus.
Also something that I'm very proud of, and I certainly know that the business is very proud of, Banqer Primary, which is the financial literacy and financial capability program that we support, has just surpassed 100,000 kids going through the program, which is fully funded by Netwealth, which is a fantastic achievement for the Banqer team, and we think making a real difference to, a difference to those children that have been through the program. On page 8, you'll see that we've again won a number of accolades. Netwealth is not only the leading specialist investment platform, but is in fact the leading platform in Australia. We were ranked by our clients and by advisors as number one for overall satisfaction, number 1 for value for money, and also number one for advisor satisfaction with mobile access for clients.
All areas that we've been investing in heavily and that we pride ourselves on. At the end of March, we were the number 1 platform for inflows, with AUD 9.4 billion, and our market share increased again to the end of March by 1%, taking our total share to 6.7%. If we play that trend out over the last 5 or 6 years on page 9, you can see that this is a structural shift that is not going away. In fact, it's very much continuing. Whilst a little bit busy, the chart on the left shows the growth or the continued growth of specialist platforms at the decline of the incumbent platforms.
There's some interesting information on the right-hand side, but in particular, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that over the last 12 months, again to the end of March, Netwealth represented 66.2% of the total industry net flows, compared to 45.6% in the prior year, which again just shows how well we're doing in gaining market share, bringing on new clients, and ensuring that we continue to, to grow with our existing clients. Also worth highlighting that all of this growth is purely organic, and has come from the efforts of the team. On page 10, whilst we've now covered growth considerably, one of the highlights really is around the diversification of our business.
We've talked about, and we'll, we'll delve into the diversification of our revenue streams, but we've also been very focused on making sure that we can diversify across client segments, as well as market segments. So in addition to our retail book, we're continuing to, to push into, the institutional and family office space, which now accounts for 5.8% of our total FUA. And with the successful launch of our non-custodial product back in March, you'll start to see that slip up, increasing, and it currently accounts for 0.2% of our total FUA. From a platform or retail perspective, 66.1% of our business is sitting in a wrap account, which includes family trust, SMSFs, as well as individuals. And our super product is 33.9%.
Even within the superannuation slice of our business, it is a relatively young book, with less than half of that being in our pension products. We've also called out for the first time, the difference between our core and plus products. That is core, which we'll come back to in a moment, which is our cut down, baby wrap, versus plus, which is our full-featured, full investment menu. We've got some exciting news to announce in two slides time. On page 11, we've also provided a lot more detail just around the vintages of our clients, as well as where the business is coming from. We look forward into this financial year, really important that we do highlight that our transition pipeline remains extremely strong.
It has been a good start to the year. Whilst last year was slightly below where we would like to have seen new business coming in, we have got great confidence in those clients starting to transition en masse. From a vintage analysis per percent perspective, currently 23% or nearly a quarter of the advisors that are now using the Netwealth platform, have come onto the platform in the last three years. Why this is relevant is because these advisors are very much at the beginning of their transition and migration journey. As they become continue to mature, we would expect significantly more business to arrive from those existing clients that are now on the platform and using us, in addition to the to the clients that have joined in the last 12 months.
We can take any questions on that at the end of the presentation. By way of strategy and product update, if we just move to page 13. I think the good news and certainly something we're very focused on is that despite where markets have been and the very poor investor sentiment, the industry remains extremely dynamic and fluid and incredibly interesting as always. We see a huge amount of opportunity in the market, which is driven by a number of macro factors, which I won't go through in significant detail today, but worth just touching on.
On page 13, we've sought to just summarize a couple of the key areas where we see huge opportunity, and as such, have been thinking about and designing our strategy and strategic initiatives very much around these, what we call mega trends. We're seeing significant ongoing changes in customers and what they're looking for. The demographics are changing, the wealth of those demographics is changing, and people are expecting more from not only their technology, but also from their service providers. Technology continues to, to move at a rate of knots, and it's very difficult to have a conversation these days without ChatGPT or something similar being discussed. There is significant opportunities within our own business, and within the industry, where we believe AI will make a big difference moving forward.
The investment landscape continues to evolve, whilst digital assets certainly haven't been talked about for some time. The continued rise of ESG, exchanges, off-platform assets, noncustodial assets, foreign currency, capital call alternates, are all things that we're looking to bring to Australia and help advisors implement via the platform. Finally, QAR, much greater clarity around what that looks like. There is no doubt that the that the current legislation or proposed legislation is there to assist consumers to get more advice or better advice, and for that advice to be delivered to more customers.
Again, we've, we've been looking at our broader product set to understand exactly which parts of the market this is going to impact, to make sure that we've got competitive, and relevant products for each of those client segments. On that point, on page 14, you'll see that we've specifically called out, I guess, the three key segments that we are focusing on at the moment. In the past, we've, we've talked about the emerging affluent under 45 or millennials with money, as well as the established affluent over 45s.
Whilst we've had a very compelling product for the established mass throughout our journey over the last 20-23 years, we believe the time now is to refocus on this particular market segment. We'll be relaunching our Core product with an expanded investment menu, which I'll touch on shortly. Between these three key market segments, we are now building, offering, and delivering services and solutions for 65% of Australian adults. It is an incredibly large addressable market, and one that we're extremely focused on. All of this, though, does take focus and also investment. We've been building out our product set for many years now, but with a real focus on those key segments of late.
With our new strategies that we've been implementing over the last 3 years, it's really pleasing to now see a lot of the strategic initiatives around client engagement, investment, noncustodial, and also managed accounts, really starting to come together to deliver a very compelling and market-leading product to the market. We'll talk about the investment access, and we'll touch on some of the technology and administration innovations that we've delivered. Everything that we do, though, at the end of the day, is designed to improve customer engagement and satisfaction, create greater staff satisfaction and productivity, and advice practices, and also increase operational efficiency and profitability, to help them build better businesses and to deliver better advice and more advice to more Australians.
If we turn to page 16 now, some of the things that we've done in regards to the investment platform, recognizing some of those mega trends that I just touched on earlier. The reality is that investment portfolios are getting far more complex these days. The advisors that are servicing both the smaller end, or smaller balanced clients, as well as high net worth, have got to deal with greater complexity than ever before. We're also seeing that with the emergence of off-platform assets, that in advice firms, currently, around 20% of assets are administered or held off-platform, that is, in a noncustodial environment. These are traditionally administered via an Excel spreadsheet, planning software, or some other administration solution....
Having built out the infrastructure to assist advisors administer off-platform or more complex assets over the last five or six years, we've recently launched MAPS, or our non-custodial Multi-Asset Portfolio Service, to effectively offer not only the technology solution to manage with these non-custodial assets, but also to deliver the admin. That was very successfully launched in March after a six-month trial and pilot phase. We're also continuing to connect to a range of different data sources so that clients can truly get a whole of wealth view, whether that's Netwealth data, other platform data, property data, or banking data. That's all available now through the client portal, both through the mobile and also desktop apps.
Managed accounts, as I mentioned earlier, continue to go from strength to strength and are a key business efficiency and client engagement tool for many advice firms across the country. On page 17, you'll actually see how important this product is to our continued growth. In the IMAP managed account fund, there's currently around AUD 144.5 billion sitting in managed accounts today, which is significantly up or double since December 2019, just pre-COVID. Netwealth's market share of the total managed account industry currently sits at about 8.5%, and the industry is growing at a CAGR of 22%. Pleasingly, Netwealth's CAGR is 33%, so well above the industry growth rates. We think with the launch of our new product in the core market, we can accelerate that even further.
Page 18. I've, I've now mentioned the core enhancements, a number of times. What is it that we're actually doing? As I touched on earlier, the mass affluent is a really important market for us. It is large, it is well serviced by advisors, and having researched their needs and also the needs of the advisors that service them, we've come up with, and we'll be relaunching, in the next 6 weeks, our, our core product. The two key aspects to the core relaunch are a considerable expansion of the investment menu, where we'll now be offering an additional 48 well-supported model managers, offering a range of different investment strategies, ranging from ESG, index, multi-asset, and also standalone equity portfolios.
In addition to that, we'll also have our current range of assets available, which include a range of active multi-manager funds, index funds, and also core satellite index options. Importantly, we'll also significantly reduce our pricing on the core product to make sure that it not only meets market, but it is highly competitive. From the first week of October, our core pricing will be 15 basis points, which will be capped at AUD 750,000. For balances over AUD 750,000, there will be no basis point admin fee. There'll be an AUD 60 fixed fee, which is lower than current, as well as a minimum fee per account of AUD 225 per annum.
This really will allow us to, to dive, to drive much deeper and wider into our existing client base, as well as, make us very competitive as we go into new pitches. Importantly, however, also, we want to highlight that the incremental revenue, or the margin, will be very similar or above that to what the current basis point earn is on the platform products. On page 19 and, and beyond, there's a, a fair bit of information just around what we've, delivered throughout the year and also, what we're working on.
Given time constraints and no doubt the desire to get to Q&A time, we will fast forward, but key areas for us this year and that we can have been focusing on include data, data aggregation and reporting, a huge focus on driving advice efficiency, and a big focus on client engagement through things such as the client portal. I'm happy to take questions on any of those initiatives in Q&A or afterwards. If you now turn to page 28. The last section from me before I hand over to Grant Boyle is just some brief comments on our corporate sustainability. Really pleasing, again, as a business, to see this continue to mature.
As a business, we're clearly very focused on delivering great customer service, great products, to our advice community and also to the clients that they serve. Ultimately, that really is the biggest impact that we can have externally on the community by helping people drive better performance, ultimately, live better lives in the future. In addition to that, however, we are also very focused, and this is something that we're getting loud and clear from our, our customers, but also from our, from our staff, is that desire and also want to be more active in the community.
Um, and we've set up and delivered on a, a number of initiatives throughout the year, uh, including a very significant number of volunteer days, uh, fundraising efforts, um, and also investment into our, um, talent and broader staff wellbeing. A couple of key highlights, uh, throughout the year, we were, uh, ranked in the top six, um, so ranked sixth in the top 10 best places, best places to work for women, uh, by WORK1 80 , back in March, uh, and we achieved 77% employee engagement score, which is top quartile for our industry. Uh, and the other area on page 30, um, which we won't go into a lot of detail now, just, uh, just the success, uh, of the Banquer Primary program, which we'll continue to fully fund for kids in schools and, and looking to, to grow considerably.
A 100,000 students through the program is just an outstanding effort over the last five years. On that note, I will now hand over to Grant Boyle to walk through a detailed analysis of our financial performance. Thank you, Grant.
Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone. If we move ahead now to slide 32. This, this is a, a slide that, that summarizes and demonstrates that, that we have been successful in delivering consistent growth with our various revenue streams, demonstrating, you know, some decent macro resilience. Our 4-year compound annual growth rate for revenue is just under 21%, and for EBITDA, it's at 18%. As mentioned earlier by Matt, EBITDA exceeded AUD 100 million for the first time, which is a significant milestone for us, and the EBIT growth rate has been achieved whilst also making a, a significant investment in the platform roadmap, system scalability, security, and our service capability. The EBITDA margin percentage, excluding share-based payments, was at 48% for FY23, which is also a very solid result given the investment we've made.
Moving ahead, moving ahead to slide 33. This slide, this slide summarizes the FY23 financial results compared to 2022. Total revenues increased by 21.6%, that was, as usual, primarily driven by the growth in our funds under administration, which grew by 26.3% over that same period, also improvement in our cash margins. These increases were partially offset by lower average cash balances, which we'll discuss a bit more later on, also transaction revenues, which were down 11.6% on the prior year. Total operating expenses were at 24.5% higher than the previous year, pleasingly, operating expenses are only up 1.5% on the second half, which I can also discuss further on in the presentation.
Those two things contributed to an improvement in our EBITDA margin, which increased from 46.1% in the first half to 49.8% in the second half, and those numbers are, are excluding share-based payments. As usual, we continued to expense all of our internal IT development costs, and as, as reported in the first half, we did capitalize some third-party software. Statutory NPAT was at AUD 67.2 million, an increase of AUD 11.2 million or, or 20.9%, and the earnings per share increased by 20.2% on the prior period. As usual, we had, we had exceptional cash generation with very high pre-operating cash flow of AUD 106.3 million.
Today, we declared a final dividend of AUD 0.13 per share, which brings the total dividend for the year to AUD 0.24, which is fully franked. In summary, a really good operating result. We had strong profit growth. We've been investing for the future, and whilst also in this year, we managed to improve the EBITDA in the margin in the second half. Moving to slide 34. This sets out the metrics that we've seen in July, which some of these, Matt also touched on before. Our FUA growth is obviously the key milestone, grew by 26.3%. AUD 9.9 billion of net flows, which is obviously just under the AUD 10 billion milestone. The other key call-out that I discussed before around the cash transaction account, that was slightly down on the prior year.
It's down to 6.4% as a percentage of FUA, we were at 7.9% in the prior year. The, the major driver of that was just the increases in term deposits held by clients, both on-platform and, we suspect off-platform, which has led to increases in that, the pooled cash account. Moving ahead to slide 35. This, this slide sets out the revenue margins and, and revenue per account for our, for our business. It's the first time since we've listed where we've actually seen an improvement in, in all metrics. In the, in the past, we've been very focused on, on highlighting the revenue per account, which we, we think is the key, key metric which drives our profitability. That, again, has increased to 1,710, which is an $89 increase for the, for the year.
This year, our basis points also increased from 32 basis points to 32.8 basis points. That was mainly driven by more normal cash margins, which is up, which is somewhat offset by the lower transaction fee earn. Overall, it's proving relatively stable, and in recent years, it hasn't had the trajectory in terms of basis points that we previously experienced. Moving now to slide 32. This slide sets out the core components of our platform revenue. We've always had a high level of recurring revenue and a focus on revenue diversification, and that's proven resilient through the various market cycles. As I mentioned, the cash revenue was up this year. Transaction revenue was down.
Prior year, it was the opposite, so it gives us a natural, a bit of sort of softens the impact of some of the, the market cycles. Well, that's certainly proven the case over the last three years, which is, which is useful, and that it, it franks the diversification strategy that, that we've had. Moving to slide 37. Just onto the expense side, we've, we've always been very disciplined in, in balancing a, a focus on investing for, for long-term growth, while ensuring that we, we keep, keep the rate of expense growth under control, and we ensure that the we continue to deliver profit and growth to our, our shareholders.
For FY22, we had a step up in our investment to support some of the growth and the innovation and some strategic investment across IT infrastructure, people, and software. Much of that investment flowed through into our run rate, which contributed to an increase of 26.1% on our expenses. Pleasingly, as I mentioned before, the operating expenses in the second half were only up 1.5%, so we've seen that growth stabilize. Technology and people have been the biggest driver, as usual, at the annual increase, we've also had increases this year in T&E, marketing, advertising costs, which have risen as the economy reopened after COVID-19.
We only added 38 roles in FY 23, and that was compared to 113 roles in the prior year, and non-headcount related expenses were slightly lower in the second half than the first half. In summary, we're really pleased with how our costs have been tracking despite the difficult inflationary environment that most of our community has experienced. Moving to slide 33. This slide sets out where the headcount has been added. As I mentioned, we only added 38 roles this year. 30 were in technology and reflecting our ongoing investment in enhancing the platform capability. One point to highlight was there was an unusually high number of vacancies at year-end, which we would expect to normalize in the first half.
That, that 38 role headcount number obviously was impacted by the vacancies at year-end, but it was still a significant decrease on the level of growth in headcount that we've had in recent years. Moving now to my final slide, which is a summary slide. Netwealth remains in a very, very, very strong financial position, remained highly profitable and an attractive EBITDA margin, retaining strong revenue growth. We've, we've still got a very high level of recurring revenue despite the increasing transaction fee revenue that we've had in recent years. Which means that we've got really predictable recurring revenue, which is becoming increasingly diversified. The exceptional correlation between EBITDA and cash flow. We've got a really strong balance sheet. We've got low CapEx, we're debt-free, and we have cash reserves.
We're continuing to invest for the future with an ongoing strategic upgrades to our IT infrastructure and software. We remain the leader in the high net worth in private wealth sectors, as Matt mentioned, we're now increasing our focus on the mass affluent and emerging affluent segments. We are the fastest growing platform for the last 12 months, we remain the number one platform for customer satisfaction and managed accounts. With that, I will hand over to Matt, who will provide an operating outlook before moving on to questions.
Thank you very much, Grant. I think that was a great summary at the end, so I won't repeat what Grant's already gone through on page 41. From an outlook perspective, we do enter FY24 with a really strong pipeline and a very high win rate for new business across all key market segments. We're feeling very positive about this year and believe that it should be another good one. We've successfully secured several new important licensee relationships, including a number from last year that have now begun transitioning and funding new accounts. As Grant said, we remain in an excellent financial position, highly profitable with strong EBITDA margin, very high correlation between EBITDA and operating cash flow, very predictable recurring revenue, scalable and predictable expense base, also significant cash reserves.
I'd like to thank the Netwealth team for an absolutely huge effort and a big year, the board and the executive team, and now open to questions. Thank you very much.
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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Bob Chen with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. A couple of questions from me. I, I think historically, you've provided some guidance on flows into the new year, but it looks like you haven't today. I mean, what's feeding into that sort of conservatism, and how should we think about net flows, given your comments earlier about good visibility and a really strong pipeline?
Yeah, look, I think you've probably summarized it pretty well there. We are very confident going into this financial year, and as mentioned, we've got a fantastic pipeline and strong conversion rate at the moment. As you would have seen, we've provided quite a lot of additional detail in the full year results this year. We always seek to provide a lot of information in our quarterly result updates, and we think that's that's appropriate moving forward.
Okay, cool. Just in terms of the margins for the business, it's obviously stepped up with that cost control, lowered hiring. How should we think about that sort of going into the year as well, given you've got 38 vacant roles open at the moment?
Yeah, we obviously haven't given any guidance in terms of where the margin is going to be. We've, we've historically tried to avoid the market getting excited with expanding EBITDA margins. We've, we've, we've, if anything, tried to keep a, a lid on expectations. At the moment, we're last 12, last two years, we've, we've seen it creeping into the sort of low, low 40s. It's, it's for the second half, we were up in the high 40s. We're not going to give a, a number in terms of where it's going to be going forward, but it, it's at various stages, it's going to go, go up and down. I know that doesn't give you any particular answer, but we're pretty comfortable when it is around about that 50% ±.
At the moment, it happens to be around about 50%. There's no guarantee it won't go up and down in the future.
Okay, cool. I guess, just to understand how you guys think about that reinvestment, is this sort of reactionary to how you're seeing flows come into the business or the growth coming into the business?
No, I wouldn't have thought so. We've, we've got a range of initiatives, that we've embarked upon. We'll always make sure to keep costs under control, but we're certainly seeing a very big opportunity ahead of us, and we want to make sure that we maximize it.
As I said, we've been very comfortable seeing that margin go into the 40s in the past when we saw the, uh-... so that we needed to invest in certain initiatives, and where our focus is always around long-term profit growth. At various stages, that, that margin is gonna go up and down, but the, the main, main thing that I think our shareholders are after is profit growth.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Bob.
Thank you. The next question comes from Olivier Coulon with E&P Financial Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Congrats on the result, strong second half. Just had a question on the average cash balance, because it did seem like, given where it finished, 6.4%, I think it was 6.8% at the first quarter. Your ancillary revenue was quite high, so either suggested, you know, a knockout result X the cash margin or maybe the cash kind of balance wasn't just the numerical average of those couple quarters over the full second half. Can we have a bit of clarification on where the average cash balance was over the second half?
Obviously, we give a cash percentage each quarter, so you've obviously got those metrics as well. It does fluctuate. It typically does start increasing towards the very end of the financial year with the top ups for superannuation, then it gets another kicker after the fund managers distribute after year-end, and then that gets, that's invested, it gets invested. But there hasn't been massive fluctuations apart from that. There are other items within the ancillary revenue that aren't cash, clearly. It doesn't represent the whole part.
Yeah.
some of those, we've seen some good increases in some of those other ancillaries that we don't disclose separately.
Yeah, okay. I mean, obviously, transition, sorry, I guess, transaction revenue was down. That other ancillary revenue, you know, seemed like it offset it in this second half. Is that expected? Is that, like, high level of ancillary revenue expected to be kind of consistent going forward, or was there an element of perhaps non-recurrence of some of that?
Typically, most of the items in the ancillary are, by their nature, more recurring. The things that are volatile, typically sit within the transaction revenue line because they're volume related, and obviously cash has some volatility in it, which we're, we're all very aware of. The remainder of the items that sit within ancillaries are generally more recurring.
Okay. Then just on, you know, the core pricing changes, obviously, you got fairly low penetration of that segment of the market. Do you have a view as to how much you need your volumes there to lift to offset, I guess, your existing base, which presumably is taking a price cut? Then I guess the second question, you know, on a similar tact, just on the new cash product, yeah, what you're thinking is there in terms of how much you need to win on that new cash product or, you know, TDs back from off platform to offset any impact on the pooled cash product?
Yeah. We obviously do know the impact of the reprice. Our belief and view for this year is that we should be able to make that back, plus add incremental revenue over the next 12 months. The way that we've constructed the product and priced it, the margins are a good despite a very low headline rate. As far as the cash product goes, we're looking to launch that in the next six to eight weeks, I believe. That will be a 31-day cash fund, where clients can park money in that fund, and if they need access to it, they just need to give us 31-day notice.
The current view is that'll pay 25 basis points over RBA, and we think will be very attractive for people looking for a medium and long-term cash vehicle.
We're not, not anticipating much cannibalization, if any, of the, the, the transaction account. It's by its nature, it's, it's not an investment at option. I think if people are taking an active view to, to manage any, a cash there, they'll either use a Term Deposit or they'll use our new product. I don't think it's an alternative to that, to that core product.
Yeah. Term Deposits still continue to be extremely high on very short term. The bulk of them would be three or six-month terms. We would expect hopefully, as markets start to turn later in the year, that's not a forecast or prediction, but as things improve, to start to see that money moving, A, back onto platform. We, we know that a lot of the withdrawals over the last 12 months are actually partial withdrawals going into cash or Term Deposits. We would expect that to come back on the platform to be invested in the future. A lot of money sitting there waiting on the sidelines.
Okay. Appreciate it. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Olivier.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Siraj Ahmed with Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hi, Matt. Hi, Grant. Can you hear me okay?
Morning.
Yes, sure can.
Morning, Siraj.
Morning. The first thing, Matt, you sort of mentioned a strong start to the year for flows. I mean, see, I, I know it's fraught with danger in terms of estimating flows, but we are seeing around AUD 1 billion for the first few weeks, which seems to be down year-on-year. I mean, can you just comment whether flows are down year-on-year growing? That'd be helpful.
Yes, we, we obviously haven't provided flow guidance or information, just a bit of a, a starting figure or, or fuller update. I think when, when you look at the activity, and the start to the year, as far as it being a strong, start to the year, there is just the investor sentiment seems to be improving. There's a lot more activity, and, we're seeing just a much more buoyant, environment compared to the previous 12 months, which, which was tough.
Great, thanks. Secondly, in terms of the core product, there's a couple of questions, right? First thing, where do you reckon your share of flows from the core could get to, or what's your target? Secondly, who, who's the main competitor here? Third thing, in terms of pricing, I mean, you, you've reduced pricing, but if, if the product is quite good, see, the pricing is quite rational right now, so, so why reduce pricing?
Yeah, as you'd be well aware, we've, we've got a very broad feature and product set on the Netwealth platform, and at different times we've, invested into different market segments. Over the last couple of years, there's been a big focus on investment into the high net worth, ultra high net worth space with the launch of, products such as, MAPS and the non-custodial, and a lot of the reporting, that we've delivered over that period. Throughout that time, whilst our, I guess, our share of mass affluent has continued to grow, we've recognized that it's below, where it needs to be and should be.
That's as a result of some of the broader menus available on core products on some of our sort of traditional peers. We think that there's a really big opportunity, given our feature set, the Netwealth technology and Netwealth service proposition, to deliver a great product into that mass affluent space. Having researched the market, the way that we've gone about that is through reducing our pricing on the core. That's not the key value proposition. It's more about expanding the investment menu to provide a very diversified range of excellent managers and model managers with very diversified strategies. You know, we, we have seen through some of the industry stats that a couple of our peers have done better than we have in our retail managed account space.
I guess in many ways this is our response to that, and we're very confident about the growth of it. You know, clearly it's a part of the broader flow story. It's not the only story, but we think it's an important one moving forward. From a fee perspective, the way that the product's structured is that there's multiple revenue streams that come out of that product. It's not just about the admin fee. All of the new models have got equities and ETFs, as an example. There's brokerage income as well as model and RE income. From a total basis point perspective, as I touched on earlier, it's the same or above our current basis points.
Just last one, just, just for, just for Grant. See, in terms of margins, or costs for next year, I understand you're not giving guidance, but it's interesting you've removed that mention of focus on operating leverage. Especially given you have, you had a lot of weak spots and looking at hiring activity, it's still pretty low. Is it fair to assume that, you know, margins should be quite good in the first half and maybe there's weakness during the second half?
You, you cut it, cut out slightly, but I think the key is that we have, we actually haven't provided any, any guidance. We're comfortable with the, with how the, the current margin is and how the operating expenses have been, have been managed over the last period. We'll, we'll continue to, to look at the opportunities that, that's in front of us. There will be times, as I said, when that margin might go, margin might reduce and it might increase. We're not gonna give any sort of statements around commitments to certain expense growth. We, we're just going to play what we see in front of us, Suraj.
Thanks.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. The next question comes from Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hey, just a question around that cash product that you're talking about. Is the, is the view that you can not have that be a bank guaranteed product, given it's got a bit of a lockup and it's more of a fund as opposed to a, an account, so therefore, the spread can be reasonably good because you can take a bit more risk on the, on the investment side of that?
No, no, not at all. It is, it is a very, very basic cash product. Literally, AUD 1 comes in, will be down invested straight into a ANZ account.
Okay, what's the advantage of offering that level of lockup? Is it more just you're getting a, the higher rate for the client is attractive and keeps them out of a TD?
Great. So what, what we've tried to do is to basically create a product that we think is gonna be attractive for that medium to long-term money, which isn't as restrictive as a term deposit, but also provides good rates. So it's, it's sort of part of the, the cash, cash and fixed interest ladder. And we've sort of been positioned from a pricing perspective to sit somewhere between a one-month and a three- month term deposit.
Just to clarify, around the, the new- newly sort of, redesigned core product, the expectation is margins overall will be at or above the existing level for that same product. I assume that the offset of that is lower admin fees, but more integrated FUM-style margins to offset, the lower admin?
Yes, there's, there's a number of different ancillary fees that we earn through that new Core product and through a restricted menu, we're largely in control of what those revenue streams are. When I said that it at the same or above revenue, it's actually across the platform as opposed to just for that product. Current basis points are sort of circa 30, 32 basis points. We would expect the Core contribution to that to be the same or higher.
Yeah. Okay. Just, Grant mentioned costs. I mean, I think previously you've given kind of an exit rate in terms of new hires and the way to think about that. I guess we can obviously annualize the second half, but there's a run rate from the hires that you've made and the roles getting filled. I'm not sure if you can provide us any of that style of commentary at this result.
Yeah, we did that last year, but for a particular reason, Nick, that was because we'd, we'd done so much hiring in that, but towards the end of the year, we thought it was, it was gonna be useful to the market to know what the exit run rate was. Clearly, this year, we don't have that situation where the, the first half and second half are, are pretty, pretty consistent. Apart from the, the salary increases that have, have gone through, which you can make some estimates around, we think that, yeah, you've got enough information to, to work out where the year's starting. Whereas last year, that, that information wasn't, wasn't really available. We, we sort of upped our... We, we, we had some initiatives around technology that were kicking in.
We had some, a large number of hires that were, were needed to be included in that run rate. We thought that was required last year, but not this year.
Yep, fair enough. In terms of the, the tech roadmap that you've got for this year, I mean, would you describe it as more intensive than the tech roadmap that you had last year? Or is it sort of those investments can be maybe in the envelope of the existing kind of tech team? I guess, as a stage two to that question, there was AUD 4.9 million of sort of external IT build costs. How should we think about those cash flow items going forward?
Those, those capitalized items are very project related, so they're, it's, it's difficult to provide any sort of long-term guidance because it's around the work that's being undertaken and the software that we've, we've added on this year. There, there's certainly going to be some in the FY24 as well. In terms of the, the future, I, I, I can't really provide any further guidance because it's around specific pieces of or specific projects that are underway currently. As, as I said, we haven't. At this stage, we're, we've, we've expensed all, all our, all our people costs. These are, these are third-party software that we're, we're adding in.
What we do in the future in relation to these third-party software developments, it's really hard to predict because it's as I said, it's all project driven. There's no, there's no pipeline for the future around those developments.
All right, thanks.
The next question comes from Kieran Chidgey with Jarden. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys, and apologies if this has been covered. I've joined the call a little bit late. Just on the, the Core product enhancers, just wondering if you could put in context, you know, how much Core FUA you, you actually have today?
There's a slide in the pack which will show the percentage. I don't have an absolute dollar, but if you look at the retail component of the platform, so the custodial component, it currently accounts for 4.1% of total FUA.
Okay. That, what, what is the strategy to sort of grow that from a distribution point of view, given I imagine a, a lot of that potential client set is, you know, not, not being serviced through your current advisor, relationships?
I think it's, it's probably dual, dual strategy there. There is, certainly, a number of advisors that will have a dual platform strategy where they'll use sort of Netwealth for their, you know, higher end clients. AUD 350,000, AUD 400,000 plus, and then another product for their smaller balance clients. This is really a recognition of the fact that there is an increasing, you know, segment within the market that is, that is cost conscious, but that is looking to adopt managed accounts and provide good quality access to a wide range of model managers.
We think there's excellent opportunity within our existing client base, and we think as we go to market, and start to, you know, obviously talk to broader key accounts, RFPs, et cetera, this will be an important part of the Netwealth story. Yeah, it's in recognition of the fact that we've that we need to do better in the retail managed account space, and we've probably left a little bit on the table in the last couple of years, given focus on some of the other segments, and we'll now look to aggressively go after that market.
That's great.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Heine for closing remarks.
Wonderful. Thank, thank you, everyone, for joining our call this morning. As I mentioned, we're really pleased with the results and looking forward to a strong 2024. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.