Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the OFX Group Limited Investor Call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Skander Malcolm, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Melanie, and thank you all for taking the time to join at such short notice. I'm joined by Selena Verth, our CFO, and Matt Gregorowski, who leads our investor relations program through Citadel-MAGNUS. I am, of course, delighted to announce that OFX has entered into an agreement to acquire Firma Foreign Exchange, a corporate foreign exchange company headquartered in Edmonton, Canada, for a consideration of AUD 98 million or CAD 90 million. Our first major acquisition, this is highly strategic, EPS accretive, and further accelerates OFX's mission to become the world's leading cross-border payment specialist. Hopefully, you've had a chance to look at our announcement and the slides which we issued on the ASX this morning, which I'll now step you through. Starting with slide two, this is a summary of why we believe this is a very strong acquisition for shareholders.
Being very much on strategy, EPS accretive, and creating a larger scale OFX that in turn creates more opportunities for us to grow sustainably. It's also at a multiple which compares very favorably to other recent transactions in the sector. More on Firma in a moment, but in summary, they're a corporate foreign exchange business headquartered and largely operating out of Canada, who delivered over AUD 50 million of revenue and over AUD 10 million of EBITDA in the 12 months through September 2021. Given its size, the acquisition will deliver the equivalent of five years of organic growth in our corporate segment in a single transaction, and will grow our North American regional revenue by over 120%. Importantly, it is a very attractive acquisition for shareholders, delivering over 20% EPS accretion in year one and over 30% in year 2 .
This is both from the synergies we can drive from taking Firma's business and putting it onto OFX's platform, creating more efficiency and more growth, as well as Firma's underlying profitability. Finally, the acquisition will be funded by debt. This debt facility, fully underwritten, allows OFX to use its balance sheet and strong cash generation to deliver good returns to shareholders in a short period. The initial leverage will be 1.5x net debt to pro forma EBITDA, and we expect to pay it off in four years or less. All up, very attractive for shareholders, being on strategy, well-priced, and playing to OFX's strong balance sheet and cash generation. Moving to slide 3. Firma generated over AUD 50 million in revenue in the 12 months through September 2021, but importantly, over AUD 10 million of EBITDA in the same period.
OFX is very committed to being a sustainable growth company, so finding a company that delivered EBITDA while growing made them a very good fit. We also know that they were early into their journey to deploy a digital platform, with only 7% of their revenue coming from clients who are fully digitally enabled, and that lack of capability has slowed their growth. It's also the reason their EBITDA margin declined slightly in the last financial year, as they've increased their investment in technology in the last 12 months. OFX grew its corporate business over 10% CAGR over the same period, not through a better service culture, but through better service delivery. Digital plus human is how we describe it. That is our opportunity with the Firma team.
As we show on the slide, their client base is very much corporate, and the majority of their transactions are spot, making it very familiar to us and therefore less risky. Moving to slide 5. Firma is a foreign exchange provider based in Canada, servicing corporate clients for over 20 years. It has over 9,600 active corporate clients, an experienced management team, a strong service culture generating net promoter scores of 76. Its clients generally work with Firma via the phone, generating larger ATVs than OFX, with Firma ATVs at around CAD 60,000 and OFX corporates at around AUD 28,300 in the first half of 2022. They typically operate in the CAD, USD corridor and across a range of industries, with the largest being manufacturing, services, and transportation.
They have over 190 staff around the world, with over 70% being located in Canada. The fact that they are early in their digital transformation, with only 7% of their revenue from digitally enabled clients so far, represents a terrific opportunity for us to combine that strong service culture with easy-to-use secure systems that help clients operate more productively and safely. Operationally, it creates efficiencies through more digitized and automated processes, lower bank fees, and better treasury management. It also represents a terrific growth opportunity, as Firma clients will get access to faster, lower cost payments, better risk management tools, and all the benefits of extra licenses and locations that OFX operates in. Moving to slide 7. This acquisition delivers on all the strategic points we've been driving over the last three years. More corporate, more North America, and building a more valuable company.
Firstly, the added scale creates more flexibility and opportunity to invest. By adding over 9,600 corporate clients, we get better access to client insights, currency flows that we can use to lower our banking fees, and as we've demonstrated, a bigger opportunity to grow recurring revenues. Adding 190+ staff at a time when talent is in such high demand is very valuable, especially talent like that in Firma, who have years of experience and a good track record in serving corporate clients. The financial scale helps also. We get the opportunity to invest deeper into our strategic priorities, further reduce our cost base where it doesn't add value, and deploy capital at bigger opportunities. Secondly, clearly, this is right at the heart of our strategy.
It plays to our knowledge base and gives us further momentum, both of which we can use to build a better client experience, a stronger and better team, and further differentiate OFX. It's also very fortuitous to have entered into a multi-year sponsorship with the National Hockey League, quite coincidentally, right before we acquired a great Canadian company. Sometimes a little luck is welcome. Having more corporate as a proportion of our portfolio helps us build a more valuable company. As we've previously shared, corporates generate, on average, around eight times the lifetime revenue of consumers. They are more consistent in the way they use us, and we're investing in many other ways to serve this segment better. Finally, there are healthy synergies available, whether it be through more efficiency or more growth. That is as it should be for a middle-of-the-fairway style opportunity.
What we've committed to in order to drive the EPS accretion quickly, but we also see longer term opportunities beyond that. As I mentioned earlier, their client base is very much corporate, and the majority of their transactions are spot, making integration far simpler. Moving to slide 8. This shows how OFX will look pre and post-close in terms of segment and geographic portfolio composition. I've talked already about the benefits of more corporate in our portfolio mix, so I won't repeat that. One observation to emphasize the value of it is that since FY 2018, OFX actually saw its total active clients decline as we shifted our origination efforts from consumer to corporate. While net operating income lifted from AUD 53.6 million- AUD 68.7 million between first half FY 2018 and first half FY 2022.
While we value active clients, clearly corporate active clients are far more valuable than consumer active clients. Further, we think we can make them even more valuable as we deploy better tools for them, especially if we give them a stronger digital toolkit, such as what TreasurUp has developed. We also see benefits in accessing more global flows, both in terms of the reduced risk on certain flows and in accessing better and bigger opportunities. While it's terrific to grow our North American region revenues, this transaction also grows our U.K. corporate revenues as well as our Australian and New Zealand revenues. All valuable to drive scale and very helpful at a time when corporates in North America particularly are participating in strong GDP growth. I'll now hand over to Selena, who will take us through the financial impact.
Thank you, Skander. Moving to slide 10, as Skander has already taken you through, Firma is a great addition to the OFX portfolio. Not only does it fit our strategic goals of growth in both corporate and North America, but it's also a business that generates good revenue and EBITDA. Firma had an EBITDA margin of 21% in its last financial year, and as Skander mentioned, that was subdued by recent investment in technology and people, which is why bringing our businesses together makes so much sense. The combination of OFX and Firma will create a larger business, which, with synergies, will generate AUD 55.1 million of EBITDA with margins of 30%. That will make it one of the most profitable cross-border payment companies and well above our peers, many of which are loss-making.
These strong EBITDA margins generate strong cash flows, which will enable us to continue to invest in the client experience, product innovation, and geographic expansion. We also like the resilience it will provide as the further geographic portfolio diversification and recurring revenue streams from corporate clients positions us well for a post-COVID world. Moving to slide 11. Being both cash generative businesses and having AUD 37.6 million of net available cash as at 30 September 2021, we will fund the total consideration of AUD 98.3 million and transaction costs of AUD 9.3 million using a combination of cash on balance sheet and a new debt facility. With a transaction of this size, debt funding was a great fit.
Our day one net leverage will be 1.5x , and with interest rates low, it is an efficient source of capital that enables us to deliver EPS accretive returns for the group. The debt facility is a five-year, AUD 100 million bullet term loan. It is underwritten and will be syndicated post-close. With no restrictions on prepayments, we're expecting to repay the loan over four years by the end of fiscal year 2026, subject to no other value additive initiatives coming up which would require additional funding. As you can see, interest on the new debt is expected to be AUD 3.3 million in the first year, plus some initial setup costs.
When we implemented the share buyback program, it was an efficient way of returning capital to shareholders while providing flexibility to respond to emerging growth opportunities. Firma is an excellent growth opportunity and given the strong cash flows of the combined business, we will suspend the share buyback program while we deploy this into debt repayments. I will now hand back to Skander to take us through our business update.
Thanks, Selena. Just to wrap on slide 12, we're very excited about what this transaction brings to OFX. Firma generates strong earnings from a high-quality customer base and has an excellent service culture. There's already a lot of alignment. By bringing our businesses together, we become a much bigger corporate specialist with 40% more recurring revenue and considerable growth opportunities. Our business is performing well with the positive trends we drove in the first half continuing into the third quarter. We will update you on the quarter in more detail in January, and also plan to host an investor day in mid-March, which we will let you know more about in the new year. Shortly after that, we expect to complete the Firma transaction ahead of releasing our year-end results in May.
With that, I'll hand over or I'll hand back, I should say, to Melanie for questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Seth Hoskin with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator, and morning, everyone. Congrats on the deal, guys. It looks like a really solid one. Just a few questions from me. Just wanted to dive a little bit deeper into the revenue synergies you're expecting to see. I think that what you've flagged is that really it's from digitizing the Firma offering with OFX's platform to the existing customers. Is there also the ability to go further into, I suppose, increasing the further penetration? Putting it all together, what does that mean in terms of what you expect the organic growth of the combined corporate business to be?
Thanks, Seth. Maybe I'll take that one. Yeah, everything you've just said are sources of upside. We took, in calculating the synergies, a fairly conservative view, and that's appropriate because it's a significant transaction for OFX. As you say, when you think through the revenue synergy opportunities, first of all, we know that when we have clients in a corporate segment on a digital platform, all other things being equal, we tend to get more transactions from those clients than when we don't. We've seen that as we've improved our client experience, we've seen transactions per active client go up, and we've reported on that many times over the last few reporting periods. We also know that Firma was starting down that path and they've had a single vendor for their history.
They haven't invested a lot of capital in that. As they started that journey, and as we shared, they've now got about 7% of their revenues from clients who are fully digital enabled. They've seen growth from those clients at significantly higher rates than those clients who are not digitally enabled. They were going down that path, and we would expect that to generate revenue synergies for us. The third area that we also feel pretty confident about is that Firma don't have all the same licenses in the U.S. than us, and CAD-USD is their strongest corridor. Their clients often have businesses in the U.S., and they hit certain sort of challenges in growing with their clients because they can't support them in the way they want to support them.
We also think having additional licenses, particularly U.S. licenses, creates further revenue upside in this transaction. Look, at the start, we obviously wanna be prudent around what's possible, and we'll further update as we start to realize that.
Thanks, Skander. I suppose just going on a little bit further on there, are you able to detail some of the customer metrics of Firma a bit more in terms of how active customers trended? What's the historic churn rate compared to, I suppose, OFX's corporate business? And is the NOI margin that they're delivering on turnover pretty similar to the core business?
All right.
Sure, sure.
Yeah. Remember, the Firma business, those ATVs are higher ATVs and they're slightly larger corporates. In our portfolio, we have, in our corporate segment, we have anything from micro SMEs up into the mid corporate. The portfolios are slightly different. They tend to be small to mid-corporate. What you see from a transactions per active corporate is slightly lower than what we are, but not significantly lower. Their ATVs are higher. Their margins are slightly higher. It is, you know, their dynamics are slightly different than our portfolio of corporates. It's really because of that's what they're slightly different targeting of the corporate segment.
Just to build on what Selena said, too, the other thing is that they've actually got a pretty diverse range of industries that they support. You know, I touched on the three largest, but actually it's not what I would call severe concentration in any one industry. It's pretty well distributed, which again is really healthy from our perspective.
Thanks, guys. That's really helpful. Then just in terms of obviously the EBITDA margin for the business, you flagged some investment in technology which impacted the most recent year, but it has been a bit lower than, I suppose, the core business for OFX at sort of 25%-26%. Where do you think, I suppose once all the cost synergies are, you know, delivered that the group EBITDA margin can kind of trend towards over the medium term?
Yeah, some of that, I'll take it first and then Skander can jump in, is on slide 10. You can see on slide 10 the very
Mm-hmm.
EBITDA margins are lower than ours at 21%. When you add Firma plus OFX together and you add in the synergies, which is that second column on that page, you can see that the EBITDA margins then get to 30%, which is AUD 5 million of synergies. Now, you know, that is absolutely brilliant. Remember, AUD 5 million of synergies on their EBITDA number is still pretty good. Obviously we will make sure that we continue to push and the leverage as best we can.
Just to add to what Selena said, I think, I always think you've got to think about EBITDA margins alongside top line. For us, we think we can improve their top line over time or the combined group top line with that sort of EBITDA margin. Our general view is that, you know, as Selena said, it should be in that sort of range. It may be a little bit better, it may be a little bit worse from time to time. We obviously wanna combine a strong EBITDA margin with the stronger top line over time.
Thanks, guys. Just one final one from me. Just how the trading's performed post that sort of September end. I know that's pretty recent, but the continuing trends ahead.
Yeah, it's been very healthy. We're very happy with it.
Yeah. What we said on that last page is we'll do a 3Q update in January once we've closed off December.
Cool. Thanks, Skander. Thanks, Selena. Congrats, guys.
Thanks, Seth.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Owen Humphries with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Sorry, we should have coordinated there, Seth. Most of my questions have been answered. Maybe just a quick one from me. This is your first major acquisition. Does this start the consolidation phase for you guys now that you can get debt financing? This seems like it's a purpose-built facility for this acquisition, but is there further? Like, how many opportunities have you looked at? Is there a bit more in the pipe here?
Well, it's certainly our first, and it's certainly not our last. As we've shared with investors, we've actually been investing in our capabilities. As you know, we've got a lead for corporate development in Selena's team. Obviously, we benefit from a very strong balance sheet and cash generation, which, as you say, creates the opportunities for debt. I'd say the third thing is that you've got a management team that maybe not at OFX, but elsewhere, has done M&A. The fourth thing would be, you know, a very strong board in that respect, who all have M&A experience. Then probably the fifth thing is, as we've been saying really for some time, this industry is going through consolidation and we will be disciplined and, you know, very pleased with the multiple we've agreed here.
It shows discipline. It shows, you know, we can do the right acquisition, not just any acquisition. Obviously our ambition is to continue to find the right opportunity, but we'll do the right ones, not any one.
Yeah, good one. Quick one just on the 30% accretion, two years forward. Just talk me through the percentage of that's revenue synergies versus cost synergies.
Yeah. A lot of the EPS, it's a great deal. The reason it's a great deal is this company makes real profits, right? When you look at the EPS accretion in year 2 , you've got profits. We have debt, but it's paying down quite quickly. The profit offsets the debt. The overall AUD 5 million of synergies is a couple in revenue and the rest in cost. We'll be working both angles on that to make sure that delivers. It's not just all revenue and it's not just all cost, but really the EPS accretion just comes down to the fact that the business is profitable and the structure of the debt, you know, debt is cheap.
We have also made sure that, we've assumed the right, interest payments over time as the BBSY curve changes. The profitability of this business is really attractive and the drop through to create EPS accretion.
I can expect further if you guys manage to do the digitalization process for Firma, you imagine the revenue synergies will be much larger than what you say? I know the EPS synergies would be, you know, accretion will be much higher.
That's what we would hope. That's not what we're guiding at this point.
No. Good one, guys. Great deal.
Thank you.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Xu Yang with MAM. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning. Maybe firstly for Selena, just on the interest rate for the debt. Is that a fixed or floating facility?
Yeah, it's a floating facility, but if you look at it's a five-year facility, which I think is a really nice way to position the debt, because you're not gonna have to restructure it in a couple of years' time. It's there. We pay it down before it needs any restructuring or re-raising. The interest rate on it is a BBSY plus a margin which is effectively floating. We have used the BBSY curves in our modeling to make sure that we know the interest rates will rise and make sure that the debt repayments take that into account. But it's a pretty efficient facility.
Okay, great.
Also, the other one to note as well is that there's no prepayment penalty, so if we wanna pay it down, there's no penalty on that.
Yeah, understood. The second one, apologies if I missed it, but are you guys acquiring these Firma on a cash and debt-free basis, or is there a balance sheet you're acquiring that for?
That is a lovely question, and we've spent many hours on that. Yes, cash-free, debt-free. Remember, these businesses do require collateral and working capital so that obviously will be there. Yes, a cash-free, debt-free basis.
Okay. Just on slide 5, the key metrics, the AUD 2.2 million target client turnover, annual turnover, is that what they're delivering today? If I multiply the AUD 2.2 million by the 9,600, that's their group turnover.
Yeah. I mean, basically what that represents, Xu Yang, is the target FX turnover of their clients.
That's not an aspiration, but that's what they're delivering today.
Yeah. Correct.
Okay. I guess it sort of works out to be around like a 25 basis point that revenue margin if I'm not wrong.
No, that's not right.
Okay.
Yeah. That's the target. Like, they're basically targeting customers that do at least AUD 2.2 million in FX turnover. Now, some will be smaller, some will be larger. They may not get all of it from maybe banks. Oh, whatever else. Yeah.
Okay. It is an aspiration.
Their margins are higher than ours.
Okay.
A little bit higher than ours.
Yeah. Understood. Have you guys called out what the cost to achieve those synergies are? The AUD 5 million plus synergies?
It's the cost. There will be integration costs and at the moment we've done an integration plan. Obviously, we've got through signing, we need to sit down and actually plan that out in more detail. You know, it's gonna be AUD 2 million-AUD 3 million in the first and second year to generate those synergies. Now, we'll update you as we go. We wanna actually sit down with them and go through that. Actually, what makes sense, how does that work? Do we have the right profile and timing on this? We'll update you as we go, and we should get a lot clearer on that as we get closer to closing and we're actually off and running on integration.
Just to build on what Selena said, Xu Yang, that as I touched on in my remarks, the beauty of this business is it's largely a spot business. You're not, it's not a highly complicated integration. The challenge, of course, is that you've got to make sure you get all these clients onboarded onto a digital platform in an orderly way. Obviously, you've got to make sure that the integration goes well for Firma staff. So there's a few puts and takes, but you know, relative to the other integrations that Selena and I have done over the years in the lending and leasing world, it's probably at the less complicated end.
Yeah. Understood. All right. Very good. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Glen Hoffman with Renaissance. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Can you hear us?
Yep.
Yeah. Hi. Can you just go through just a bit of the background in terms of how the deal came about, the level of due diligence you've been able to do given orders and all that sort of stuff and how you've gone about that? Just also the, you know, background of ownership and management and just go forward, you know, key executives, et cetera, as a starting point. I've got a few other questions, but that'll do to start.
Yeah. Background, I had started conversations with their CEO really in the context of industry relationships back in 2017. Dave Dominy, their CEO, 'cause they got offices here, was visiting. He reached out, we met. He was very interested in the OFX digital story, 'cause they were obviously contemplating that at the time. We just talked really under the heading of, you know, industry relationships. We kept in touch. I caught up with him over in San Francisco, 2018. Selena was in touch with their CFO at about the same time. Again, really more on a kinda relationship perspective because there were similar client challenges, similar business challenges.
As I mentioned earlier on, we've invested in, you know, our corporate development and our head of corporate development had prepared, you know, a kind of list of who we felt were the right middle-of-the-fairway opportunities. You know, he works for Selena, you know, one of the names on there was Firma, and Selena had a relationship. Our head of corporate development obviously has relationships through the bankers and so forth. There was a connection, an outreach, and then the process got underway. September 21, we signed an NDA. From a due diligence perspective, Glen, obviously it's been pretty thorough. The good news for OFX is because we've got a North American management team, you know, we actually were able to hold management meetings with their team over in Edmonton.
Our head of corporate development was over there for that. You know, from a due diligence perspective, obviously you've got all the work that goes on through the data room and the advisors, but there has been face-to-face meetings on top of that. It kinda draws on what I would call a couple of medium-term relationships and good relationships that Selena and I had with their executives. The vendor is a gentleman who, with his brother, founded a business 20 years ago. He is the sole owner of the business. He's Canadian and essentially he was looking. He understood very well that what this business needed was a you know, an injection of capital to help digitally enable it.
He was reaching the end of his time and looking to move on. He had yeah decided it was a good time, and our timing was good, too. Obviously we went through a process, and here we are. We like their management team. We think they understand their clients very well. Obviously, you know, there's a lot of work now to get in there and test and validate that. Yeah, you know, we like their team. We think that's part of the magic of Firma is they really do have close relationships with their clients and you know we'll work through an integration program from here on in.
Okay. Thanks. In terms of, you mentioned the margins about, you know, they were transitioning to sort of a more digital online profile and margins were impacted by spend on that. In terms of what we should be thinking about. Sorry?
EBITDA margin you're talking about?
Yeah. Correct.
Yeah.
I'm just trying to understand in terms of the go forward, I mean, the plan is to bring your platform to bear here in terms of bringing presumably their customer set onto your platform and offering. Does that imply that there's sort of costs that come out that they were spending on tech that won't be necessary going forward? Or there's still costs that have to be spent to bring the tech, your tech up to speed to service their clients? Or is your platform effectively able to service them already? I would imagine so, but just wanted to clarify.
The basic thesis is, as you said, they will come onto our platform. Their tech spend and investment was really on what I would call off-the-shelf systems. They had started to engage various vendors to put together a tech program that would, in effect, create a similar platform to OFX. Whereas OFX had been developing its platform in a kind of more in-house originally anyway, and really over the last four or five years, moving it to be more kind of a blend of in-house and vendor supported. Obviously, moving them onto our platform means that we can already support what their clients are asking for. We think we can generate some cost savings that way, obviously, because you don't need two tech platforms, you've just got to integrate it.
there's always costs, as you well know, with integrating it, and we'll work our way through all that. That's the basic thesis, Glen, if that makes sense.
Yeah. Okay. The other one was just on that, slide 5, where you've got the sort of geographic coverage by turnover. Is that meaning where the customer resides, the customer base resides? I'm just trying to understand the relatively limited, cross-channel sort of, Europe, U.K. exposure there for a business sitting in Canada. Just trying to understand the opportunity or is there any particular reason why that's so small?
Yeah. I mean, the reason why it's relatively small is they have not invested in a big global expansion plan. It is, you know, you and I have talked about this many times. If you really wanna run a global company, you've got to put big local teams in, you've got to create marketing programs. Obviously, they're licensed, and they have product capability in those places. But they don't have, for example, a management team sitting in London. They don't have a management team sitting in New Zealand. They've got folks here, but our North American team is a fully intact management team. Our U.K. team is a fully intact management team supported by functions.
I would say they're just earlier in their kind of corporate, and not atypical for companies in this space who kind of pretty similar to OFX in some respects when I started, don't have what I would call a full team on the ground exploiting that opportunity to its best capability. But I mean, again, as I said in my remarks, UK corporate alone, you know, they've got quite a decent book there that's very complementary to ours. It will significantly increase our UK corporate business. In New Zealand, similar. That's all valuable for us. It's just that they've really been very Canadian-centric in the way they've built the company over time.
Okay. Final one from me, guys. Just also on that page, I think you referred to it in your comments, the dot point in terms of the 70 sales staff and a strong sort of service culture and a pretty much more of a plain sort of desk style service orientation. Can you just give us an understanding of you know, the opportunity and what your existing capability is in the North American market in terms of you know, desk and more handholding of clients and just what this adds to capacity? I presume you're looking to just leverage these guys in with a you know, stronger growth in customer origination and corporate accounts and use these guys to service a growing base. Is that the plan? Or
Yeah.
You know, is it more to take their.
Yeah. I mean.
Take them off digital or take them onto digital and actually, you know, maybe rationalize over time?
Yeah, I mean, the place I'd start, Glen, is that, I mean, you've heard me talk about in the past is a great service culture is uncoachable. It's very hard to find people who just turn up and love clients and wanna help them. These guys, from what we can see, have that, right? What they lack is a good digital platform, because clients don't value every single task that a person does, as we've found. They actually love it when a person's available to deal with the knottier questions or the more complicated questions, right? They don't need a client to book a transaction. They don't need a service person to book a transaction. You know, they can get quite comfortable doing that themselves.
Maybe on the larger transactions, maybe in the forwards, that sort of area, that's where a human adds value. The technology should make the clients more productive. What we wanna do is help our new Firma employees, the service people, to say, "Let the technology do the tasks that the client would value the technology doing, and then you can be repointed to grow the value of the client relationship." Again, you've heard me talk about this, but Alfred and the North American team have doubled forward revenues in the last 12 months. That's because they're focusing on the higher value tasks that clients want a person for. It doesn't mean they've dropped transactions. It doesn't mean they've got unhappy clients.
It just means, you know, a better client experience digitally allows the client to do what they wanna do digitally and then talk to us when they wanna talk to us. That's the plan with the Firma employees. They've got a great service culture. They're probably being held back somewhat by just not having a technology platform that allows the clients to do what I would call the kinda less value-added tasks.
Okay. Thank you. Thanks, and congrats on the acquisition. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Marco Correia with Perennial. Please go ahead.
Hey team , can you hear me?
Yeah. You're a bit soft to hear, Marco.
Okay. I'll try and speak up. Just wondering on the brand strategy, given that Firma's obviously quite a niche specialist, but larger than you guys in corporate North America. What are you thinking in terms of branding and strategy with the two brands now?
Yeah. The current thesis, Marco, is that it will be consumed into the OFX brand. We'll go to one brand. Now, that said, one of the things we need to do is spend time with the Firma team testing that question. They don't spend a lot of money digitally. As you know, when you're rolling out a brand or you're doing a rebrand globally, you have to be very thoughtful about rebranding and digital connections. Indeed, I know you haven't been in the stock for a long time, but longer holding stock folks know that actually, funnily enough, up in Canada, when we rebranded to OFX, we lost a bit of momentum in our digital consumer marketing because we just didn't execute it as well as we could have.
Now that is actually less of a risk. There's no question that the culture at Firma is great. We're very, very respectful of that brand. The basic thesis today is that we will rebrand to OFX, and we'll test that with the Firma team over the next few months.
Yeah. Okay. That's clear. The last question I have is just on COVID impacts for the business. Obviously, you provided that revenue EBITDA profile, but you know, as you guys experienced, there's quite a bit of volatility over the last two years. Did they see a similar thing occur in their business?
Yeah. You can see in the revenue numbers that they produced, they kinda saw a bit of a flattening, like us. What we showed you is the full year. I can tell you that, you know, like us, they saw a bit of a dip around the time of, you know, March 2020, and then they came out of it. What you saw is the overall top-line number of the year. It's generally more kind of, I don't know if resilient is the right term, but consistent than us because it doesn't have consumer. While it's not growing as fast as us, they definitely saw some COVID impacts.
They're also seeing, you know, positives at the moment, as I said, because Canadian and U.S. economies look pretty strong, and generally corporates over there are doing pretty well.
The other really nice thing to see was, like, they've got forwards just like we do. 10% of the book is forwards. During that COVID, the beginning of COVID, if you hadn't done your credit monitoring correctly, you would've taken large losses because your customers wouldn't be able to make margin calls as the extreme volatility hit. What was lovely is they've got similar philosophy to ourselves. They take credit very seriously. They were making margin calls. The customers were paying the margin. They didn't take any large, exposure or hits because of forwards being out of the money, which is really nice to see for a corporate portfolio.
Yes. Okay. Sorry, just to follow on that. Or did they have a similar experience with fraud, I guess, in North America? Is that a possible area where you could improve the operations of Firma?
Yeah. They do have fraud, and yes, North America, just like we have fraud. In that fiscal year 2021 number there, CAD 10.9 million, about CAD 800,000 of that was bad debt. They are implementing similar—they were implementing some of the similar technologies. I'd say that we probably have a better fraud technology stack. As they come onto our digital platform, that will even benefit even more. But their just as vigilant, but probably don't have all the technology that we have. They monitor it very closely. There is some fraud in those numbers, and they do run bad debts.
Yeah. Okay. Sorry, Selena, while I've got you. The rates that they get at the bank, I mean, is there a lot of benefit in terms of now that you've got additional scale, that you can get better, or just better rates across the whole value chain?
Yeah. In those synergies of AUD 5 million, we have assumed some bank fee synergies, and you'd hope that adding the volumes together, you should get a lot better rates. Also you can look at both rate cards. I think we've got a couple similar banks. We've also got a couple banks that we both don't use, but we will be working the bank fees. It's always fun to have those negotiations with banks.
Yeah. Okay. Well, great. Thanks, guys. Cheers.
Thank you, Marco.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Stewart Oldfield with Field Research. Please go ahead.
Good day. Actually, just following up on a point about the counterparty banks that they have that you don't have. Are they global like banks that you know? Does this bring you a better diversification of counterparties?
No, it's not so much a better diversification, Stewart, because we've got access to kind of the Tier 1 banks. It's more to Selena's point, you just got more flows through those corridors so that you can negotiate better terms.
Got it. Given you've, you know, demonstrated an interest in Canadian banks, does this mean that you also took an interest in EncoreFX last year?
No.
As in-
We obviously watched EncoreFX's results, but no.
No. Fantastic. You referred to this as sort of being a mostly spot business. Does this bring any sort of derivatives capability that you don't have already?
No, and we don't intend to move outside of our existing risk appetite in that respect.
Excellent. All good. Thanks for that.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Malcolm for closing remarks.
Well, thanks, Melanie. And again, thanks, all. I know we're into the run home to Christmas and a well-earned break for everyone, but really appreciate you taking the time. We're very excited about this transaction and the future that it provides for OFX, and we look forward to talking to you more about it in due course. Thanks very much.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.