Thank you, Darcy. Thank you everyone for joining the call. As Darcy mentioned, I'm joined by Selina Verth, our Chief Financial Officer, and Matthew Gregorowski, who leads our investor relations program with Citadel-MAGNUS. Selena and I will take you through the pages, and then there'll be time for Q&A. This year, we'll cover four things: the full year result, what it is and what drove it, our financials in more detail, our strategy, including our investment in Paytron and announcing a share buyback, and our FY 2024 outlook, as well as the Q&A. Let's move to slide four in the pack. FY 2023 was another record year with turnover of AUD 39.1 billion, driving net operating income or NOI to AUD 114.1 million, and underlying EBITDA of AUD 62.4 million.
These metrics represent the biggest NOI we've ever produced, up 45.6% on prior corresponding period, and the biggest underlying EBITDA we have ever produced, up 40.3% versus prior corresponding period, while generating the strongest net available cash of $67.4 million we have ever had. This financial performance was the result of very strong execution. Clearly, the external environment was as unusual as we've ever seen, with rapidly rising interest rates, inflation, and considerable political and geopolitical conflict causing uncertainty for our clients and team. Nonetheless, we were very disciplined in driving an exceptional integration of Firma, in continuing to invest and deploy new features and services in our global platform, in leading our team and engaging our employees, and in managing the considerable risks we faced.
We saw the highest fraud and loss prevention we've ever had to manage, which is a testament to the efforts and capabilities of our team, which continues to grow. Moving to slide five. The performance of our three segments that comprise B2B has been strong and underpins both our FY 2023 result and our FY 2024 outlooks. The three segments in B2B are corporate, online sellers, and enterprise. Corporate is our largest of these, generating just under 90% of the total B2B fee and trading income or revenue. In FY 2023 was the strongest performer, generating AUD 124.6 million of revenue, up just under 90% versus FY 2022 and up 10.7% second half versus first half. More on the corporate segment in a moment.
Online sellers or revenue declined 6.9% as it reflected the overall decline in e-commerce volumes we've seen following the COVID-driven surge. It was encouraging, however, to grow active clients 5.5% and to further strengthen our product integration with Amazon. We continue to see a great opportunity in this segment in the future, notwithstanding the short-term challenges. Enterprise saw revenue growth of 2.1% in FY 2023 versus FY 2022. The rate of growth was higher in the second half as it grew 14% versus the first half. The growth in the second half was driven by the activation of our Link program, some growth in our WiseTech program, and continued strength in our Macquarie program.
Importantly, as previously mentioned, we've been focusing on targeting smaller prospects that are in our strategic sweet spot that we feel would be easier and faster to activate and would use existing technical infrastructure. We saw that bear fruit, especially in the fourth quarter, where we announced and activated programs with Automic and Shift, for example, and grew the pipeline from 56 to 67, and these were well dispersed regionally. In all, very encouraging indeed. Moving to slide six. The corporate segment is performing very well for OFX and is very much the key driver as we build a more valuable company. Firstly, our clients are very loyal, delivering recurring revenue of over 88%. As we have shown, the revenue growth we see is very much the steady growth over time of clients using us more, complemented by adding new clients.
Secondly, we target and support clients who give us substantive average transaction values. In FY 2023, these were AUD 31,900, broadly stable versus FY 2022. Firma had targeted and served clients who use Firma for fewer but larger transactions, which meant the group corporate ATVs rose to AUD 36,500 over the full year. These healthy transaction sizes give us good economies of scale and reflect the trust and support we get from clients. The growth in ATVs since FY 2020 has been due to a change in the mix of portfolio. We see larger transactions from clients in industries such as wholesale trade, investments, and public administration versus industries like retail or business services. These ATVs were stable in FY 2023, and we expect them to remain stable in FY 2024.
Thirdly, we grow with our clients, evidenced by the consistent growth in transactions per active client. Excluding Firma, we've grown transactions per active client around 19% in the last three years whilst growing ATVs and fee and trading margin. Growing transactions by number and size creates terrific operating leverage as the incremental cost of a transaction is low once a client is onboarded and active. We see a terrific opportunity here with Firma. Given the majority of their clients were phone-based, their transactions per active client were lower. As we migrate them onto our platform, we expect to see this grow at a low marginal cost. Indeed, the fastest-growing subset of the Firma portfolio were the clients on the Firma online platform, which supports our thesis. Moving to slide seven. Our B2B portfolio is complemented by a valuable consumer portfolio.
In our case, we serve consumers who use us for high-value use cases such as wealth management and property purchases or sales. The nature of these use cases means we see transactions and ATVs fluctuate half on half. Historically, it tended to fluctuate as volatility hit currency markets. Events like Brexit or COVID tended to trigger our clients and prospects to move money. In the last year, we have seen a fair bit of volatility, but for the first time in 10 years, we've seen a combination of rapidly rising interest rates and inflation, which has deflated asset prices, and in turn, the higher value use cases have softened as proportion of all activity. However, we see the consumer portfolio perform well through the cycle, generating modest growth but healthy returns. This also despite pivoting our marketing program to focus on the corporate segment over the past three years.
The number of active clients is slowly declining, although revenue grows in particular periods as the size of transactions grow or margins grow or both. Through the cycle, we see growth around 5%, though in any given year it will vary, such as FY 2023, where we saw revenue growth of 11% in the first half versus first half 2022, offset by a revenue decline of 13% in the second half, generating an overall revenue of AUD 71.6 million, which was largely flat to FY 2022, but up over 24% versus FY 2021. We remain pleased with our consumer portfolio and the continued growth in the quality of the portfolio and intend to continue to support clients who value the trust, great value, and the simplicity of the service we provide. Moving to slide eight.
As I just covered, our overall performance in FY 2023 was strong in the first half and a flat second half, driven by a softening in the consumer confidence globally for high-value use cases. The chart on the left shows group revenues split by segment by half since first half 2021. We share this to illustrate a few important points for investors. Firstly, the total portfolio is affected by swings in the consumer portfolio, but that effect will be more limited going forward as the pivot to B2B has well and truly taken hold. We do occasionally see some softness in corporate, such as first half 2022, but largely we see steady growth at a long term CAGR of between 10% and 15%.
Secondly, whilst we can have unusual half-on-half performance, as we did in FY 2023 driven by consumer, it is rare that that persists over multiple periods. Finally, as we start to build synergies from Firma, and as we start to build stronger growth from OLS and enterprise, we expect to see the effects of consumer fluctuation lessen on the overall result, though it will still remain valuable. All of this revenue growth can be supported by good execution across margin, OpEx and risk management levers also. Now let me hand over to Selena to share more detail on our financials, including our P&L, our balance sheet, cash and intangible investments.
Thank you. Skander. Moving to slide 10. We have driven a record financial result. We have growth across all regions and are delighted with the contribution from Firma. Fee and trading income or revenue was up 42.4% to AUD 225 million. Firma contributed AUD 59.7 million to the result and a record year for their business. We saw growth in all regions with APAC up 7.4%, EMEA up 27.2% and North America up 105.7% or 7.1% ex Firma. The revenue growth rate of 42.4% when adjusted for currents and currency is more like 41.3%.
Net operating income was up 45.6%, which is a higher growth rate than revenue as our bank fee and commission ratios held, while we had a benefit of AUD 3.9 million from interest in other income. Rising interest rates have allowed us to make some interest on the cash we hold. The benefit has increased from AUD 800,000 in the first half of 2023 to AUD 2.6 million in the second half of 2023. Our clients value speed, our treasury function is critical in providing liquidity and security, enabling fast and low-cost payments. Interest income is a nice upside to money moving through our accounts, we will not prioritize this over speed of payments. Our underlying EBITDA is AUD 62.4 million, up 40.3% on FY 2022. A record for OFX.
As we had outlined, we had a very strong first half 2023 with underlying EBITDA of AUD 32.3 million. We continued to see growth in corporate in the second half of 2023, weaker conditions for consumer resulted in the second half 2023 underlying EBITDA of AUD 30.1 million. As Skander has talked to, consumer revenues saw a decline in high-value use cases such as property and wealth transfers as a result of rapidly rising interest rates. Consumer does fluctuate but delivers steady single-digit growth through the cycle. Over the year, we generated healthy EBITDA margins of 29.2%, which is some of the highest in the industry. Our FY 2023 tax rate is unusually low at 16.2%.
The main items that have contributed to this, as we have guided, the Offshore Banking Unit tax regime ceases in FY 2023. A result, the deferred tax position has been remeasured to 30%, creating a decrease in the FY 2023 income tax expense of AUD 800,000. The ATO has also implemented an intensity measure for R&D tax benefits. Because we have invested more in intangibles, we have gone over into a new threshold which delivers a higher R&D rebate. A result, the tax credits have increased from 8.5% to 15%, resulting in an increased benefit of AUD 700,000 on the FY 2023 eligible R&D spend. Considering what this means for FY 2024, we previously guided that with the cessation of the OBU tax regime, the tax rate would increase to 29%.
We now expect this to be more like 25% with the increase in R&D tax credits. Statutory earnings before tax is AUD 37.5 million, up 14.8%, and includes AUD 5.9 million of interest on our debt, which we used to fund the Firma acquisition, and AUD 6.7 million of Firma transaction and integration costs. Our statutory net profit after tax is AUD 31.4 million, up 25.6% on FY 2022, and our net cash held is a healthy AUD 93.8 million, up AUD 9.6 million on FY 2022. Moving to slide 11, our underlying operating expenses are AUD 151.7 million, up 47.9% on FY 2022.
A significant portion of this increase is Firma as we complete the acquisition on the 1st of May 2022, including 193 employees. Employee expenses had the largest increase, up 58.2% or AUD 38.6 million. AUD 26.2 million of this increase was due to Firma, the remaining AUD 12.4 million represents further investment in technology and sales, as well as salary and inflation for approximately 5% over the period. Promotional expenses were AUD 16.8 million, up 1.5% for the year. In the first half of 2023, we spent AUD 9 million, the second half of 2023 was lower at AUD 7.8 million. You may remember there was high volatility in the first half of 2023, as always, we continue to invest in marketing where we see the demands.
The cost of branding campaigns and a higher weighting to the first half of 2023. We would expect a similar spend in FY 2024 as FY 2023. Technology expenses of AUD 11.4 million were up 37.7%, largely due to Firma and a shift to software as a service infrastructure from owned for risk management, onboarding and payments. We are currently running two platforms, OFX and Firma, until we complete the integration. We are excited that the first region to go live, which was Australia, has successfully completed in April. Bad and doubtful debts are in line with our expectations of AUD 2.5 million and just over 1% of revenue. We always guided that the FY 2022 bad and doubtful debts of AUD 100,000 would not continue given industry fraud levels.
Like previous years, most of the bad and doubtful debts originate from fraud in North America. Only a few hundred thousand of the AUD 2.5 million in FY 2023 was a credit loss on a forward contract. With the U.S. banking collapses, increasing interest rates and heightened financial stress for some corporates, we are remaining vigilant, ensuring we review our credit positions and collect collateral from customers when positions move out of the money. Despite the increase in fraud losses, as Skander mentioned, we saw the highest fraud and loss prevention we've ever had to manage, which gives us confidence that the systems and processes we have in place are effective and continuously improving. In FY 2023, our productivity initiatives were focused on bank fee savings, which you can see through the NOI margins, and also our reduction in our office footprint.
We successfully reduced our office footprint in closing Firma's Sydney, London and Winnipeg offices and co-locating with OFX. We have also reduced our footprint at our Sydney head office by over 30% as we adopt a more hybrid working model. We expect FY 2024 growth in FTE and operating expenses to slow as we continue our focus on productivity and the realization of the annual AUD 5 million Firma synergies by the end of FY 2024. AUD 3 million of these are cost focused. Turning to slide 12, you can see the continued progress we've had on margin management. You may remember the first half 2023, NOI was 53 basis points and 62 basis points at same currency. As many of the margin changes occurred in the first quarter 2023, we did expect the full year NOI margins to be higher than at the half.
For the full year, we had an NOI margin of 55 basis points and 65 basis points ex same currency. On our annual turnover of AUD 39.1 billion, the 11 basis points margin increase has a substantial impact. Four basis points of the increase is due to pricing changes in the book. We watch the market closely and have an excellent pricing engine that we can use to test price elasticity. If there's more elasticity for the service that we offer, we can command a higher price. We've also seen many of our competitors increase their prices throughout the year. This is a result of costs rising due to inflation and the growing need to generate a profit for their shareholders. This may provide more opportunity for us in FY 2024.
As mentioned before, with rising interest rates, we're able to make some interest income from the cash balances we hold with our customers. In the second half of 2023, this was AUD 2.6 million compared with AUD 800,000 in the first half of 2023. We continually look at more efficient ways of offsetting our FX risk while generating a small return at the same time. Overall, Treasury revenue represented AUD 14.7 million of our fee and trading income or revenue in FY 2023. All of this while growing our corporate portfolio, which has lower margins, faster than consumer is an excellent outcome. Adding to that, as you can see, five basis points of the margin increase is from our Firma portfolio. It is a service-led proposition, they're able to get a higher price, which we love.
As we continue in an inflationary environment, investors are naturally concerned about the effect it may have on our growth and returns. What this shows is that managing margins is a critical lever which can generate excellent value when it is managed well. We will continue to monitor pricing, ensure we get the right price for the fantastic service we offer. Turning to slide 13, we continue to have a strong balance sheet. Our net cash held position is AUD 93.8 million, which is both the cash held for own use and deposits due from financial institutions. As mentioned, this is up AUD 9.6 million from March of 2022. We hold some of this cash as collateral for our trading lines and bank guarantees.
Collateral and bank guarantees were AUD 26.4 million, which is down AUD 15.2 million on March 2022 or AUD 22.6 million from the first half of 2023 at September 2022. You may remember September 2022 was a particularly volatile period as the GBP almost hit parity with the USD. As volatility has eased, the collateral position has reduced, we've continued to negotiate better arrangements with our bank, freeing up cash. Net available cash is AUD 67.4 million. We saw our cash flows from operating activities in the second half of 2023 revert to our usual high cash conversion rates, with the second half 2023 statutory EBITDA of AUD 29.1 million converting to AUD 28.3 million of cash, a conversion rate of more than 90%. The annual underlying cash conversion when excluding Firma items is also strong at over 90%.
We funded the Firma acquisition using debt. When the transaction closed on the first of May, we drew down our AUD 100 million five-year facility. We've paid down AUD 32 million of the debt facility in FY 2023 and are on track to repay the debt facility within four years, subject to no other value accretive growth opportunities emerging which require funding. With our current net available cash balances, our current net debt position is AUD 18.8 million. Skander will take you through our capital management policy later, how we'll use this excess cash. Turning to slide 14, as we guided at Investor Day, we've invested AUD 17.7 million in our single global platform in FY 2023. We have also invested a further AUD 1 million in the platform for the Firma integration.
We are very pleased that the first region went live in April and that others will follow throughout this year. We invested AUD 10.5 million in FY 2022. You may remember the original intention was to invest more like AUD 12.5 million. Like all companies, in FY 2022, it was hard to find resources in this space, so we spent a little less than we intended to. Since then, we've developed a number of outsourced partnerships for technology development and hired talent outside our core office locations. This has allowed us to catch up on our FY 2022 delivery program. The team has had a huge year of delivery. You may remember we spent FY 2022 automating incoming payment allocations.
This year, we took this to a step further and created intraday streaming to make faster USD payments for our clients and reducing the payment processing time by nine hours. Improved connections also provide flexibility and cost efficiencies with bank fees as a percentage of revenue down 16% over the past three years. We've rolled out an improved consumer risk management process and implemented a global customer biometric identification and verification system. The new platform allows for automation, but more importantly, with better verification rates in North America, with an improvement of 17% and 25% in EMEA. This increased fraud protection has allowed us to keep bad and doubtful debts around 1% of revenue, which is very low for our industry. Like many companies, we have also invested in cybersecurity and data protection.
This included a multi-factor authentication process which helps stop credential stuffing and botnet attacks. We have a global customer management system which all our frontlines are using, allowing us to better track and respond to customer queries. We have also enhanced our online seller partner integration to ensure that we continue to be included in Amazon's list of approved payment service providers. All of these elements led to a high client engagement scores with Trustpilot score at 4.2% and NPS of 71. Skander will now take you through the FY 2024 outlook and our new investment in the platform we have announced today.
Thank you, Selena, for that excellent summary of our financials. In this section, I'll cover the exciting investment we are making in Paytron, a contemporary platform for the streamlining of business payments and workflows for small and mid-size enterprises, as well as an announcement that we intend to buy back up to 10% of our shares as part of our capital management program. Moving to slide 16, investors will be familiar with our strategy on a page describing our goal to build the world's leading cross-border payment specialist. We discussed this at our Investor Day on March 23rd, so I won't go over this in much detail. I will restate a few key points.
Firstly, we are playing in a huge market that grows every year and is largely dominated by major banks who are more expensive and less well-liked by their clients than the new entrants. More and more customers are taking up the specialist service in every region, as evidenced by the growth rates of all the new entrants, whether they are public or private. Secondly, we choose to target four segments. We chose those because we feel we have the right combination of skills, knowledge, global presence, platform, risk management, and service delivery for those clients and prospects. Our competitive position is strong, driven by years of investment, learning and progress, and we know that we are differentiated through feedback from clients, competitors, banks and regulators.
Finally, we have a valuable business, but we can make it more valuable through good execution, better capital management, a strong team, and by leveraging our credibility as an industry specialist to grow wallet share of our clients by generating revenue beyond the core spot transaction. Today's investment is a great example of this. Moving to slide 17. Whilst any investment or technology has technical and financial dimensions, we prefer to start by asking, what do they do for our clients? This page describes our investments in building a best-in-class client experience over time, and it underpins the growth in transactions, ATVs, client retention, and ultimately revenue and EBITDA that we have seen in our corporate segment in the last 10 years, and how this will be further improved by our investments in Paytron and Travelex.
OFX started by creating a simpler, lower cost way for clients to make payments cross-border. It was digital, complemented by humans, and it dramatically reduced the cost of these payments for our clients, as well as improving the time spent by clients on this, as well as the speed it took for beneficiaries to receive client payments. As we spent time serving clients and understanding their needs better, we added features and benefits. Forward contracts, for example, reduced the risk for our clients. Limit orders let them set a preferred price without having to monitor the market. We added the ability for a client to receive a payment, which complemented their ability to make a payment. That step was enabled by our prior investment in more sophisticated transaction monitoring that gave our banks confidence we could get comfortable with incoming payments as well as outgoing payments.
As we started to serve enterprise clients who wanted the ability to do mass payments with a single instruction, we developed that feature. Larger clients wanted role-based access for their employees, so we developed that. As we entered the online seller segment, it was clear that we needed to be integrated with the major marketplaces and PSPs, so we built that. Those clients tended to transact more often, and because they were also heavy users of accounts receivables, we had to ensure we had a reasonable picture of the client's funds or a prototype of a ledger. We've known for some time that we don't get all our clients' wallets because the smaller transactions tended to get paid with corporate cards. We had done a bit of work to assess the work required to build it ourselves and had a path to do that.
Paytron gives us a ledger, which is what is required when processing more transactions and real-time authorization, as well as the ability to issue a card. As I previously mentioned, they have also developed deeper integrations with accounting software and invoice management to further help clients manage AP and expense workflows. Each of these features has been added over time, built from the insights we gain from working with clients, understanding the cost and the risk, and deciding whether that is a feature we can do well. We don't add everything we see as possible, and generally we look to stay focused on flow features, i.e. features that enable flow as opposed to balance sheet features which rely on us using our balance sheet or push us into risk areas we don't have experience in.
We expect to generate revenue beyond spot transactions and more transactions by deploying features that add value to the client experience. This is why we have acquired Paytron. Turning to slide 18. Today we generate broadly 90% of our revenue from spot transactions and the remainder from transactions that are related to forward contracts. This mix reflects our history of starting with consumer clients who largely used us to move funds at a lower price more quickly than banks, as well as corporate clients who found our combination of price, service and speed compelling. Corporate clients increasingly see the value in laying off risk, especially as they navigate turbulent supply chain, payroll and other risks in their businesses. However, we also know that the same corporate clients have needs that are associated with their cross-border payments and accounts receivables that we do not serve.
Firstly, they'll have generally smaller value transactions, so they use corporate cards to pay. For example, software costs that are billed in US dollars or vendors for services provided offshore. They can use OFX for many of these, but they don't because it may seem easier to use a card. Cards are widely accepted, the reporting is excellent, and they can be controlled well. Secondly, as invoicing has become increasingly digitized and accounting packages increasingly integrated with invoice management, corporate clients have turned to firms specializing in integrating their invoice management with their payable solutions, both domestically and globally. Those firms generally charge a subscription for that service. Paytron provides a digital solution across cards and invoicing, and by OFX acquiring them, we get immediate access to the software we were in the process of building to access these revenues from clients.
The software we were building, as Selena described many times in our intangible investments, creates competitive advantage by making life simpler, safer, more reliable and more visible for our corporate clients. The acquisition of Paytron fits into our platform journey by giving us card and invoice management solutions. Over the next three years, we will continue to operate the two platforms until we're ready to merge the two, which we expect to start within one year of closing. In addition to the software, we're also delighted to welcome Paytron's team to become part of OFX. Led by co-founders Jaco Veldsman and François Henrion. Jaco and François have over 30 years of experience across multiple geographies in major banks and entrepreneurial organizations in the payments and trading space. They've assembled a very strong and experienced team to build this platform and take it to market.
We've structured this investment to align the interests of shareholders, the vendors, and clients. In summary, we will acquire Paytron in exchange for a consideration of AUD 11.25 million OFX performance securities, which vest when certain revenue targets are met by Paytron over the next three years. OFX will fund the operating budget, with OFX retaining discretion in line with their revenue performance. This structure will encourage revenue to be generated, a strong integration, and a better client experience, all underpinned by our usual discipline, risk, and compliance foundations. We think this is a great way to add valuable features and services for our corporate clients and create the most compelling proposition for corporates globally while enhancing our revenues over time. In addition to generating revenue from loyal clients, OFX has always been a strong generator and converter of cash.
This gives us options with respect to the best way to generate value for shareholders. Moving to slide 19, today, we have announced that we intend to buy back up to 10% of our shares via our share buyback program. In simple terms, the program will run for up to 12 months and will be periodically reviewed during that time. Its purpose is to return value to shareholders whilst we believe it is to shareholders' advantage to do that. It will not be done at the expense of investing for sustainable growth or in repaying debt, as Selena outlined, or at the expense of investing in M&A or other strategic investments, as Paytron has highlighted. As our last buyback demonstrated, we will run a disciplined program. We'll keep investors abreast of outcomes. Moving to our outlook.
We've carefully considered our business and performance in creating a range of outcomes we expect. Turning to slide 21, to summarize what is a complicated set of possibilities we expect to grow. Firstly, we expect to grow our net operating income so that it finishes between AUD 225 million and AUD 243 million. That range is a little wider than normal, but reflects, in particular, the difficulty in synthesizing and forecasting the range of economic outcomes we see globally, and largely how that plays out in our consumer portfolio globally and in the U.S. region for our corporate segment. We'll keep the market appraised. However, in the trading we have seen in April and May to date, the evidence confirms the range we are providing. Secondly, we expect that to translate to underlying EBITDA of between AUD 63 million and AUD 74 million.
That range is a little wider than normal, driven by the NOI factors I described earlier. We expect the EBITDA impact of Paytron to be approximately AUD 4 million in FY 2024, offset against the AUD 63 million-AUD 74 million range. We expect intangible investments to be between AUD 17 million and AUD 19 million. The range here is a reflection of the availability and cost of technical resources, as Selena mentioned earlier. We have a clear program that is well understood and resourced. The Paytron investment will add in the region of AUD 1 million in FY 2024 as we uplift their product to enable the future combination I mentioned earlier. Finally, we expect to generate the AUD 5 million of synergies from the Firma integration in line with expectations, with the Australian migration complete and performing well.
Against this outlook, we've summarized our main assumptions, as well as the main tailwinds and headwinds potentially affecting the outcomes. Our main assumptions are that our corporate segment will perform in line with the historic CAGR, underpinned by stronger trading in the second half of 2024 as corporate clients get more confident in interest rates and inflation. Our enterprise segment will grow steadily as it started to do in the second half of FY 2023. Our consumer and OLS segments will be in line with FY 2023 performance, with confidence picking up in the second half in consumer to complement steady start. The main tailwinds to this would be a stronger corporate client confidence driven by improved economic conditions. Should consumer rebound sooner than the second half, fueled by stabilizing rates, better economic and political conditions, we would trend toward the higher end of the range.
The main headwinds would be unforeseen losses or risks materializing in cyber or fraud, and an extended hard landing in the U.S,, affecting U.S. corporate confidence and activity. In closing, OFX has never been stronger, more global, and more engaged. FY 2024 is off to a good start that we must execute well to drive an even better year. We're delighted by the progress of the Firma integration and excited to bring the Paytron team and platform to our clients in due course. With that, I'll hand back to Darcy to manage the Q&A.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you'd like to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We ask that you please limit your questions to two per person. If you'd like to ask further questions, please rejoin the queue. Your first question today comes from Cameron Halkett from Wilsons Advisory. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Loretta. Morning, Skander and Selena. Just firstly, thanks for the color on the guidance ranges and things and outlining your assumptions. I think we all appreciate it. It's certainly not easy to distill an adequate range. I guess just following on your comments firstly, Skander, before you concluded just around the confidence in the outlook with perhaps what you've seen, you know, since the update in late March. I just wonder if you could shed any more color without, you know, obviously spoiling what you guys generally say in your first quarter update.
Sure. Cam. To give you a little bit more color, you know, as we touched on and as you're aware, the dip in the second half FY 2023 was really mostly fourth quarter for the business. You know, corporate, for example, was down 6.4% versus the third quarter in that fourth quarter. What we started to see in very late February and which carried on into March and is continuing is if you look at corporate, the average monthly revenue for corporate for that quarter was AUD 6 million, but March was AUD 6.9 million or 15% better than the average. We actually saw a similar effect in consumer. Fourth quarter average monthly revenue for consumer was AUD 5.3 million, and I'm only talking about OFX here, so this is ex-Firma.
Just so that you can get a feel for it, March was AUD 6.3 million on 19% up. That's what, you know, Selena and I have been working on in terms of the outlook. It gave us, I guess, if you like, to use your phrase, a bit more renewed confidence in producing that outlook.
Yeah, that's great. Just the second, following on from Selena's comments around, you know, competitors and pricing. I'd seen recently a certain peer of yours made sizable increases in their margin on euro and pound transfers. I'm just curious whether OFX has followed suit.
We're always looking at the book of what pricing, if there's some elasticity there and margin will change and those levers. We're always looking at the pricing within the book. We'll keep you updated as we go. What we're really happy with is if you look at that NOI walk, the pricing levers that we did deploy during the year really played out really well. When we got to the end of FY 2023, we were happy with what we had already done. We'll always relook at it was quite a steep, you know, there was quite a few changes that we did throughout that year. A little bit more of that will play through into this year, but we've done quite a lot already.
Understood. All right. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lafitani Sotiriou from MST. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on a good result. I just wanted to dive a little bit more into the Paytron acquisition and just to understand a bit more around the integration and the current growth rate. Can you just remind me, Skander, I think you said you're not going to integrate it for two years, but they've got revenue targets that you'll be monitoring over the next 2 to 3 years. Is it a case that it's just growing organically, or how should we think about the cross-sell into your existing business? Will it be a cross-sell globally over time? Can you just add a bit more color, please?
Maybe I'll touch on that, then I'll just get Selena to clarify, because thanks for your note, which I saw went out last to clarify the consideration. Paytron are operating today out of Australia. They have an AFSL. They have clients. They're generating revenue. As I mentioned, they're targeting, you know, the same sort of target clients as us. That will continue for the first year under the Paytron brand. What they'll be doing is, in that first year, uplifting their core product so that it is equivalent to OFX's in Australia for the corporate segment. There's a couple of, you know, smaller things that they don't do today which they had on their roadmap anyway. They will uplift their product.
In that first stage, Laf, once that is ready, exactly as you said, we will offer that product to OFX Australian corporate clients, and obviously rebrand Paytron at that point so that for any OFX or Paytron client, corporate client, I should say, they're gonna get the best, the best of both, so to speak. What will happen is, over time, we will add the OLS segment and then, of course, other regions, one by one.
We're gonna be doing very detailed planning over the next sort of 60- 90 days to sort of map that out with the Paytron team, so that by the end of that three years, Laf, to your point, the main countries in region will have the availability of the Paytron product, and we will be offering that product to OFX clients and generating the revenue from that. I'll just get Selena to clarify the consideration while we're at it.
In the consideration, and it's on slide, I think it's 18 on the presentation, the consideration is just shares. Okay. The consideration is 11.25 million shares. It's performance securities. The best over 2-3 years based on their development and revenue milestones. The AUD 6 million that we refer to is actually cash to fund their business. Really it's a payment over the next 12 months to fund their business to really help them develop that platform and also continue to generate those revenue synergies. That AUD 6 million, because it's cash to fund the business, that's why you see it drop through on the EBITDA and the intangible assets. It is not a goodwill payment that goes onto the balance sheet. We just want to clarify that for everyone.
It is AUD 6 million cash, and you see it through EBITDA and, intangibles.
Hello, that makes sense. Can I just follow up in terms of the revenue mix, card and subscription revenue. Adding this back in, how should we think about? Is it 'cause there's a lot of features that you talk about that Paytron has, but is it primarily the card and invoice management that is the key things that you're attracted to? Or is it the user interface? How do we think about the pricing? Like what is the subscription revenue more specifically? Is it just a set annual fee to be able to use the invoice management or how should we think about it?
A couple of things to unpack there, Laf. First of all, certainly cards are a very, very well-known use case and product for corporate clients. You can have a look at some of the competitors' offerings and start to see, you know, the revenue they're generating, the penetration of clients that are taking up a card. And you can see in what we've put on slide 18, a kind of an illustrative, well, if we generate, you know, a reasonable uptake in cards, what the proportion of revenue would come from cards. Subscription is less certain because it's candidly a little new in this space. Paytron is generating nice subscription revenue.
That said, you know, what we've seen in other use cases is the subscription revenue hasn't over time been as much as the card revenue. That's something that we'll learn as we go. We've certainly done a little bit of analysis so far to get confident that the value proposition is attractive, but we'll flex around pricing and adoption, as we go. Certainly the cards piece is something that, as you know, I'm very familiar with in my background. There's plenty of comparables that you can go and check.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Olivier Coulon from E&P Financial Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, Skander. Just a couple of questions from me. Firstly, with the EBITDA guidance, how much of is included for interest income you expect to earn on the book over the next year?
Yeah. That second half, the interest income was about AUD 2.5 million. You know, a rate rise on top of that will slightly increase it. That's what I would expect through the halves as we go forward.
Right. Okay, cool. With the customer growth, I mean, it's gone backwards in the core OFX business, but, you know, you're still spending a fair bit on promotional and advertising. When do you think you're gonna get some traction for that investment?
Yeah. It's an interesting one, the active clients. I mean, it went up in the first half and declined in the second. It's largely a function of our consumer active client portfolio, Julian, because of just the number. Active clients in corporate were slightly down in the second half, broadly flat. We've been working very hard on improving our go-to-market, both in terms of promotional and commercially led propositions. We're definitely targeting active client growth. The overall number, you know, like I said, went up at the half, declined in the second, much more driven by consumer.
Right. Cool. Thanks, guys.
Thank you. Once again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Thank you. Your next question is a follow-up question from Cameron Halkett from Wilson Advisory. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Operator. Guys, just wondering with, thinking about the amount of spend you are actually getting from the average corporate customer now that you're thinking about, you know, cards and some of the use cases you mentioned there before, Skander. I just wonder if you guys have any statistics around how much, you know, spend or flow you are getting per average corporate customer and what you'd, you know, obviously target to take that to.
At this stage, Cam, we are just saying we will generate incremental transactions which will generate incremental EBITDA. We will update you in due course with what that detail looks like. We know, you know, as you've seen, for example, and that we've quoted, that our average transactions for active client and corporate has continued to grow, you know, every half. We know that with cards and we know from looking at competitors that that will, you know, grow again.
That's what we tried to show on 18, was just a, an illustrative revenue number. Some of the comparables, obviously, you can, you can look at firms in the public space like Payoneer, Equals, Wise does. It's a bit less clear with Wise what the penetration of cards is in their corporate base, but you can certainly get a feel for interchange revenues. That's kind of how we've developed our kind of illustrative future revenue profile.
Yeah, that makes sense. Just coming back to Paytron, the management style has always been very focused on profitability and cash flows. I believe the AUD 4 million impact EBITDA this year is expected to be around a nine-month contribution. I just wonder, as you know, look to embed that business within OFX, there's surely some easy wins there from the cost side. Also, you know, I'm sure there's some expected, you know, revenue synergies and things over time as well. Just wondering if you can provide a bit of feel for us on, you know, looking further out the profitability of the Paytron to the broader group?
You'll also see in the outlook slide, yes, the EBITDA drag for this year for nine months will be AUD 4 million. We did say that we're giving them AUD 6 million to further develop the platform and the business. The great thing with Paytron, which we love, is it's a platform that's working today. It's actually generating revenue. It's got AUD 1 million of revenue coming through it, and they're only just getting started. Obviously our focus is gonna be building, make sure the products are there for us to then sell to our customers as well and migrate our customers across. That EBITDA drag should decline over the years as that all comes to play.
We obviously have not guided on that, but what we do love is it's a platform that's up and running and working and has real clients.
Okay. Yep. Thanks, Selena. Look, if I can just quickly squeeze one further in. We've got Paytron now. It is supposedly still on the hunt for, you know, additional accretive M&A, perhaps something sort of similar to Firma. I guess just balancing all of that in addition to continuing to grow the core book, I suppose just perhaps the question being that, you know, with where Firma is today is, you know, much of that largely complete with just finishing up a number of the remaining synergy targets such that, I guess, you know, things are quite hands-off.
I wouldn't describe it as hands-off. We're very pleased with the technical and people integrations. As I mentioned, the Australian migration is now complete, and so we turn our sights on to the U.K. and then New Zealand and then Canada. The good thing about the technical migration is, you know, you kind of learn a lot of the sort of to iron out the kinks in the first one, and then the second and the third and the fourth become easier. They still need to be executed, and they're still making sure that the Firma clients get used to the new platform.
as I said, we really believe that those synergies are going to be mostly a function of them creating opportunities, to generate more revenue, but also, you know, access our banking arrangements and so forth. That's not yet complete. Generally speaking to your question around accretive M&A, Selena and I have always been of the view that we would be better at programmatic M&A. you know, do some things regularly rather than one thing every, you know, five or 10 years. that's really what we're sort of moving into here. obviously we're keeping our eye open for Firma-like transactions, but, you know, we'll be disciplined about making sure we only get the ones where we can generate a good return for shareholders.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Skander Malcolm for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Darcy. Thanks everyone for dialing in. You know, as I summarized at the end, we feel very good about the FY 2023 performance overall, and we're executing well in the early part of FY 2024. Thanks for your support.