I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Skander Malcolm, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Ashley, and thank you everyone for joining the call. As Ashley mentioned, I'm joined by Selena Verth, our CFO, James Grigg, who is Acting CFO in Q2, and Matt 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. The presentation will cover three things: H1 25 results, and the performance drivers, our financials in more detail, and our strategy and outlook. Then we'll do Q&A. Let's move to slide four in the pack. The macro conditions we saw in the H1 25 did not reflect our assumptions, which affected our top-line results, particularly late in Q2, as we outlined in our trading update of 18th of October.
Nevertheless, we worked very hard and drove the business leaders we have well, meaning while results were behind where we expected, the business remains in very good shape. We also saw the strategic pivots we've made in the last three years to focus on B2B, to grow globally, and to launch a platform that provides our clients with a broader range of products and services to generate very encouraging growth and returns. We delivered net operating income of $111.2 million and an underlying EBITDA of $29 million. We continued to execute the fundamentals well. We generated $17.1 million in underlying net cash from operations, with net cash held at $74.7 million at the end of the half.
This is a bit lower than the prior period due to our active capital management strategy, which included a AUD 3.3 million share buyback and AUD 11.5 million debt repayment, which Selena will talk to later. We grew our NOI margin two basis points off the H2 2024 to 60 basis points, which is flat on the H1 2024, as that included one-off escrow payment. Risk management remains a core strength, and the additional controls, along with continued vigilance, resulted in bad debts being less than AUD 1 million, which is ahead of our estimate.
More broadly, synergies realized and sound management of expenses meant overall underlying operating expenses were AUD 82.1 million, down 1.4% versus the H1 of 2024. Moving to slide five, this aspect of OFX, doing the fundamentals well, underpins our confidence that we can build a sustainable growth business, one that performs through the cycle.
As evidence, although the last three years have seen some of the most unusual economic and political conditions driven by the global economy's emergence from the pandemic, high government stimulus almost everywhere driving inflation, and a series of interest rate rises, we have delivered a three-year CAGR in NOI of 17.4% and a three-year CAGR of underlying EBITDA of 12.7%, even as we've grown our investment in tangibles, in employees, and in more SaaS-enabled technologies than ever before. While these investments have been thoughtfully deployed over that period, the rewards, faster growth with returns, are now beginning to emerge. Furthermore, as Selena will touch on later, our value proposition generates price elasticity, and we have seen the benefits of the countless pricing tests we've performed over the last three years, growing NOI margin 14 basis points.
This belief that a strong value proposition can sustain a fair price has always been in the DNA of OFX, but it's now supported by well-developed analytics and technology. Finally, client engagement, as measured by transactions per active client in the last 12 months, continues to grow at a good rate, up over 8% on a three-year CAGR, and that is impressive considering the real growth will come as clients are given the choice to select more products to satisfy more of their needs. In all, a very healthy company. Turning to slide six, I'll share more detail on our main segment performance and their drivers in a moment, but first, a recap on what drove our overall top-line performance versus our expectation, as we outlined at the time of the trading update.
The economic assumptions we used to build our FY25 outlook, as shared in the FY24 results in May, did occur, although later in the H1 than we anticipated. The single biggest difference between what we assumed and what we saw in the H1 was the interest rate easing cycle, starting later in the U.S. and not starting at all in Australia. Easing did start in Canada and the U.K., as well as Europe. A slower-than-anticipated easing in the U.S. meant a stronger US dollar against both the Aussie and the CAD, two of our larger corridors, which slowed the rebound in corporate confidence that we were expecting.
The US dollar strength, combined with less optimistic views of the recovery in several economies, also meant that some of our larger corporate clients deferred higher value transactions, which in turn affected overall average transaction values, or ATVs, in those markets.
As we shared in our trading update, this was most acutely felt in September and parts of August. In September, we saw corporate ATVs decline 13.5% globally. Over the H1, corporate ATVs were down 9.4% in Canada and 19.5% in the UK, as clients acted cautiously. This was very unusual. We also saw relatively benign markets with little volatility, which, along with more subdued consumer confidence, meant lower consumer activity, although it did grow versus H2 2024. Against those assumptions, the levers we controlled did perform in line or better than expectations. We saw healthy growth coming from the new corporate clients we acquired in fiscal year 2024.
We continued to execute on our margin improvements, adding two basis points versus H2 2024 to our NOI margin, and the further controls we put in place to protect us from fraud, especially in North America, are working well, keeping bad debts below expectations. As we exited the H1, we saw positive momentum return, with October revenue up 14% versus September, and with ATVs returning to the levels we expected. You can see from the arrows on the right-hand side how we see our key assumptions panning out over the H2 of 2025, all in line or improving.
Moving to slide seven, we saw mixed outcomes in our corporate segment, with the U.S. growing at just under 25% and Australia just over 9%, Europe continuing to grow very well off a small base at over 77%, whilst Canada and the U.K. were down just over 3% and 9% respectively. As a group, we grew revenue 3.5%, supported by transactions being up just over 5% and transactions per active client in the last 12 months, up 11%, while we continue to see healthy new revenue growth, up 15%. In sampling our clients in the U.K. and Canada, we see the following: a small number of larger clients did fewer of the high-value transactions we ordinarily see, but transactions are steady overall. Smaller clients are actually transacting more with ATV growth of over 6.5% versus the H1 of 2024.
We're not seeing any kind of alarming decline in active clients. Corporate active clients did decline slightly in the H1, driven by the factors affecting their economic outlook, as I explained, and therefore the FX needs. As the right-hand side of the page shows, we grew revenue by 3.5%, which is below our expectations, but against a difficult backdrop. We also continue to grow our penetration of Forward Revenue as a proportion of all revenue by highlighting to our clients the benefits of reducing the risk of exposure to currency volatility on their finances.
We do this through our team of over 150 commercial professionals worldwide. Putting together such a strong and high-performing team globally is very hard, and we're very proud of them, and especially excited to see the value that they can bring to our clients with the introduction of the New Client Platform.
Moving to our high-value consumer segment on slide eight, we delivered AUD 34.5 million of revenue, down 3.6% on prior corresponding period, but up 5.9% versus the H2 of 2024. Volatility was lower than in prior years, which impacted transaction volumes, and encouragingly, we did see a slight improvement versus the H2 in higher value wealth and property transactions, pushing ATVs overall slightly up on prior corresponding period. Naturally, having redirected all of our marketing spend to be focused on the corporate segment, part of the revenue decline is due to a small drop in active clients, but we nevertheless retain and support a valuable consumer segment, which we continue to expect to grow at low single digits through the cycle.
Moving to our enterprise segment on slide nine, it's excellent to see the revenue growth at just under 13% versus the H2 2024, and the three-year revenue CAGR of over 24%, given the investment and hard work our teams have put in. We've learned a great deal here, particularly how to win and activate smaller clients, and it's terrific to see traction building, especially among recent wins. The pivot to focus on smaller opportunities and to activate them quickly is working.
The ATP Lounge at the US Open in August was terrific. We've seen strong growth from our established clients too. There are now 20 active enterprise clients, and the more that figure grows, especially regionally, the more steadily we will grow revenue from enterprise. The pipeline is healthy, with seven prospects added during the half, taking the total to 84 in the pipeline.
Post-close, we have extended our relationships with both Link Group and WiseTech Global. As we've said previously, this segment will grow its contribution to OFX over time, generating EBITDA accretive returns. So, in all, good execution. And while the top-line growth was disappointing, the business remains in very good shape, and the encouraging signs from the pivot give us great conviction in the future. And I'll discuss the early signs we're seeing from the New Client Platform in more detail later, but first, let me hand to Selena who will walk us through the financials.
Thank you, Skander. Moving to slide 11, we have had steady revenue in a challenging macro environment. Fee and Trading Income was down just 0.1%, so flat on the H1 2024. As we outlined in our trading update, we had a good start to the half, but soft trading in the Q2 2025.
September was the lowest month in 17 months, but pleasingly, we've seen a better performance in October. As Skander mentioned, this was up 14% on September and higher than the H1 monthly average. As you'll see in the regional breakdown, APAC was up 1%, EMEA up 1%, and North America up 3%. This is offset by treasury revenue of AUD 6.2 million, being down AUD 1.4 million from the H1 2024, as part of the Firma as treasury revenue was included in the North America number post-migration.
Given the macro backdrop, it is pleasing to see corporate revenue growth of 3.5% and enterprise growth of 6%, although these were offset by the softer consumer segment down 3.6%. Net operating income of AUD 111.2 million was down 3.5%. If you exclude the AUD 3.7 million escrow that was included in the H1 2024 NOI, it was down just 0.2%.
We've continued to work on margins, up two basis points on the H2 2024, and controlled our costs well, with operating expenses of AUD 82.1 million down 1.4% on the H1 of 2024. This resulted in an underlying EBITDA of AUD 29 million and an EBITDA margin of 26.1%. This is expected to be 28% for the full year. With the investment in our platform and most of our entities based in Australia, we are allowed to claim R&D tax benefits.
Prior year benefits of AUD 2.4 million have generated a tax rate of 11.9%. As we stated the full year, we expect the future tax rate to be between 21% and 24%, but this will be dependent on R&D spend and future rebates. Statutory net profit after tax is AUD 10.7 million, down 32.3%. This includes a AUD 2.2 million fair value loss on the contingent consideration for Paytron.
Though this is a non-cash item and varies with the share price, which sat at 30 September with AUD 2.16. The contingent consideration vests in June of 2026. We have a strong balance sheet, and our net cash held balance is AUD 74.7 million. In the H1, we continued to execute our active capital management strategy, which included a AUD 3.3 million share buyback and AUD 11.5 million debt repayment. Moving to slide 12, we continue to see margin expansion with our H1 margins of 60 basis points, up from 58 basis points in the H1 2024 ex escrow. You can see from the margin walk we increased pricing in the book by two basis points, which offset the AUD 3.7 million escrow amount that's booked as other inco me in the H1 2024.
You may remember in the Q1 of 2024, we had a handful of traders leave the Firma business. We had negotiated an escrow amount in the Firma purchase agreement that allowed us to take short-term margin actions in the H1 2024, which reduced NOI but was offset by the escrow amount. It is pleasing to see this revert to prior levels following the pricing actions taken in the half. We continue to work our cash balances to generate interest income.
We generated $4.4 million of interest income in the H1 2025, which is consistent with the H2 of 2024 of $4.4 million. The New Client Platform will provide our clients with a wallet functionality, which will increase cash we are holding on behalf of clients and our ability to generate interest income in a falling interest rate environment.
We continue to work on the pricing actions to drive improvements. We have dynamic pricing across all regions and have established pricing councils and reviews to ensure we continue to test price elasticity. We are pleased with our growth in forwards as it not only protects the FX risk for clients, but also allows us to price for this risk. We have launched our new client platform and have a number of new income streams, being subscriptions, interchange, and merchant fees. As Skander will take you through, we are looking to migrate our Australian corporate customers and are excited for the use cases the new platform solves for, but also to build our non-FX revenue streams. We will update you at the full year result to how this is progressing.
Moving to slide 13, our underlying operating expenses were AUD 82.1 million, down 1.4% on the H1 2025, due to our group productivity programs delivering synergies and tight cost controls. Employee expenses were down 1.7% on the H1 2024, as the firmwide integration resulted in the reduction of 20 FTEs through productivity gains. Promotional expenses of AUD 9.3 million were up on the H2 2024, but down on the H1 of 2024 by 4.1%. We tend to have higher promotional expenses in the H1 than the second.
This is when we build a lot of our marketing collateral. We thoughtfully deployed promotional spend in the H1 2025, which, despite being down on the H1 2024, delivered B2B new revenue growth of 8.9%, and we've also launched our new OFX 2.0 marketing collateral in the Australian market.
As a result, we have seen Australian website traffic increase 13%. Skander will take you through our rollout programs for other countries later. Bad and doubtful debts are down 41.7% and are less than 0.6% of revenue, below the expected run rate of 1%, due to further process improvements and controls being implemented late in the H2 of 2024 and in the H1 of 2025. While this is great to see, we must always remain vigilant.
In May, we guided for intangible investments for the year to be AUD 18 million, with 40% of that dedicated to product investments. But we've also said that if we saw good returns on a product spend, we may go further. We launched the New Client Platform for new Australian corporate clients in June and began migration of existing Australian clients in November.
Skander will take you through our progress, which we're really pleased with. In the H1 2025, we spent AUD 10 million on intangible investments. To accelerate the Canadian and the UK launch for new clients, we are going to spend AUD nine million in the H2 of 2025, so AUD 19 million for this year and AUD one million higher than the original guidance. Turning to slide 14, we have a strong balance sheet. Our net cash held position is AUD 74.7 million, which is both cash held for own use and deposits due from financial institutions.
We hold some of this cash as collateral for our trading lines and bank guarantees. Collateral and bank guarantees were AUD 28.8 million, up from AUD 19.7 million at the end of the year 2024. This increase is due to the additional collateral we are required to hold for our wallets on the new client platform.
The AUD 9 million additional collateral and timing of operational cash flows resulted in the net cash available balance of AUD 45.9 million, which is down AUD 22.3 million from the end of the fiscal year 2024. Our AUD 29 million of underlying EBITDA usually converts at a more than 80% to cash flows from operating activities. Our cash conversion rate this half was lower than normal at 59%, generating AUD 17.1 million of underlying cash flows from operating activities. The reduction in conversion rate was due to timing of tax payments and growth in our customer forward revenues recognized on booking of the forward, but cash is only received on maturity. Through the timing of these items, we're expecting a stronger cash conversion rate in the H2 of 2025.
We have continued our debt repayments with AUD 11.5 million prepaid, and our loan balance from the acquisition of Firma was AUD 30.7 million at the period end. Due to our strong cash balances and our net debt position is positive, we are on track to repay the debt facility by the end of fiscal year 2026, subject to no other value-accretive growth opportunities emerging which require funding. Our share buyback program remains active. In the H1 of 2025, we deployed AUD 3.3 million of capital, AUD 1.6 million shares.
Buying back shares is a part of our active capital management strategy, which returns value to shareholders while also providing capital flexibility to execute on growth investments. Activity will resume following the release of our results. I will now hand back to Skander to take us through the strategy and outlook.
Thank you, Selena, for that excellent description of our financial results and what drove them. We have never felt more energized or confident in our strategy, but let's expand on the data points on slide 16 that support this conviction. At the heart of any sustainable growth company is growth in active clients. It's a very good measure of a company's ability to outcompete, to generate future cash flows, and build momentum. Our challenge in OFX 1.0 was in driving a strong point of difference to our target prospect, where we had, in effect, a single product supported by a very good digital and human service model. We provided better pricing along with a very good client experience, and we were very well trusted, but those alone were not enough to unlock substantial client growth.
A strategic pivot to B2B, and particularly in our corporate segment, meant that we dug deeper into what clients faced in their businesses every day and ways in which we could help. We were building out a more comprehensive offering, including a wallet with multi-currency accounts and cards in response to that, but the acquisition of Paytron taught us there was a bigger pain point, spend management, across both domestic and cross-border payments. That was not well addressed or served. Further, prospects saw us as a very credible provider of these solutions. In June, around a year after acquiring Paytron, we launched our new client platform, rebranding the Paytron platform as it was and gradually adding the OFX services that clients were looking for for us to scale. The response has been excellent.
Already, including the former Paytron clients, the New Client Platform now supports over 1,000 clients through the 30th of September, up over 100% versus prior corresponding periods. This is on the back of a soft launch. Since then, we've added many features, which I'll turn to in a moment. It's working very well. The slide shows you three examples of clients that we've onboarded since June and their usage. The first client, a software developer, actually left OFX back in 2015 because while they loved our service, we couldn't provide the accounts and cards they wanted.
Since bringing them home, they have two multi-currency accounts, four cards, and have already moved around 3 million in transfers. Based on their behavior so far, we expect them to grow with us, with more of their spend being moved across, including for things like payroll.
The second client was a prospect for over four years. Our sales team kept in touch, but the prospect wasn't interested enough in our pure FX product, so we could never get them to try us. When we acquired Paytron, we got in touch with them to explain the new platform and how it could help. Within a week, they'd agreed to move and have already onboarded 120 users, each paying $15 per month as a subscription, four multi-currency wallets, and have issued over 98 cards.
They're absolutely delighted at the ease of the platform, the control they have, and the simplicity with which it all works, and what's extraordinary is they haven't even started FX with us. The third client is a clean tech provider who knew of us but didn't consider us because we couldn't meet their needs for multi-currency accounts and cards.
When they heard we had acquired Paytron, they approached us, and we onboarded them, and so far, we've already seen them grow to 12 users, eight wallets, 28 active cards, and over a million of FX volume. This is just a small sample of new clients we can win with our expanded value proposition, and what is even more exciting is the genuine engagement we see from them. Right now, we don't offer our risk products or limit orders on the platform, but they're coming soon. Those products distinguish us, especially in the B2B space, from most of the new entrants and certainly from the banks, and OFX's track record of delivering simple risk management will be a substantial tailwind.
Moving to slide 17, not only are we winning clients we could not previously, but we are seeing that clients onboard on the new client platform are using a broader range of products, thereby generating more revenue and creating a stickier relationship. Firstly, although the Paytron platform was good, naturally, it was not yet fully developed. So we've been busy adding attractive features and services, as well as adding stronger security and scale. Our digital onboarding that we had deployed in OFX is now live on the NCP, generating excellent conversion rates for prospects to clients.
We've adapted our ways of working, particularly in technology and product, and have tripled the number of deployments per week. We've also launched our new partnership with Visa. There are so many more features, products, and services coming that we firmly believe will add further to that excellent client experience.
The platform is clearly resonating, easy to use, and valuable. As a result, through to the end of September, of all the revenue we generated from new clients onboarded onto the new client platform since June, we've seen approximately 50% of that revenue come from non-FX products and services, and this is despite, as I mentioned previously, us not having a full new value proposition in market. That non-FX revenue is all incremental and at higher margins. At a client level, around 40% of all new clients have already taken a new product beyond FX.
What excites us about that, about that, the nature of these products is that they tend to grow in value to the client and to OFX over time. For example, clients who have cards tend to build their usage over time. Around one in five clients have already activated at least one card.
In fact, of the clients who have cards, on average, they have around seven per client. Each card generates revenue through interchange revenue, while accounts track revenue through funding fees, interest income, and FX transfer margin. This is why our whole team and board have never felt as optimistic to build revenue over time at a faster rate through more products, more clients, and more engaged clients. As that grows, it reduces our exposure to macro. Moving to slide 18, naturally, we monitor competition. We want to understand several things.
Firstly, we want to see whether our products and services are more attractive to our prospects and clients. Secondly, we want to see whether our products and services are getting used in the same way or differently so that we can build out our roadmap to remain differentiated as well as relevant to our target client.
It's not always straightforward to get clear, unambiguous data points on competition. Many are private and don't publish detailed or timely data. Of the public competitors, some put parts of the data in the public domain, but not all. Some report over different time periods, and some use different definitions or compete in different geographies. We have heard some investors express concerns that we're being outcompeted. This page shows three public competitors and their relative performance in as comparable a way as we could present it.
These are all large mature businesses serving B2B. As a result, the equivalent of our Q2 shows that in FX revenue, they shrunk over the period by 3% versus PCP. This compares roughly with our corporate portfolio growing 3.5% over the H1 versus PCP. In fact, our 2Q revenue was up 2.1% versus PCP.
They grew their non-FX revenue by nearly 40% over the same period versus PCP and interest income by 13%. Competitor B's results reflect the fact that they focus largely on FX and target larger clients than competitor A. Their FX revenue for the calendar year 2023 was flat versus PCP, but they grew their interest income nine times over the period. Competitor C generated 9% FX revenue growth for the equivalent of our Q1 versus PCP. We generated just under 5% over the same period.
The same trend on non-FX growth can be observed with non-FX revenue growth growing at roughly seven times FX revenue growth. These data points do not suggest to us that we've been outcompeted in FX, especially when we overlay new revenue growth and transaction growth. But it further highlights the opportunity to grow revenue from non-FX.
And we remain vigilant to competitors and competitive offerings, but very confident in the execution we have and the path we see. Our real opportunity to accelerate growth in the short and medium term is to provide our existing clients with these products and services on our new client platform, as we know many of them will be taking this product from new entrants as we've seen or banks. Moving to slide 19, this is an update of where we are so far on that journey. We acquired Paytron in May 2023 and began the process of uplifting and rebranding the platform almost immediately. By June 2024, we had a prototype we felt was robust enough to begin to offer to new prospects and launched it under the OFX brand.
We had received several requests from existing OFX clients for the new service, and we were onboarding them client by client as we developed a robust systematic client migration program. That migration program commenced in October when we wrote to the first tranche of existing Australian corporate clients, and we've already seen a positive response, with clients asking to engage through webinars and product demonstrations. The first group was migrated from November the 9th, and we will migrate further tranches before Christmas and more in Q4.
In parallel, we continue to improve and enhance the platform to ensure its OFX status, and we will add our risk products over the course of fiscal year 25 so that every corporate client can be seen on the new client platform and get the same or better than they have been on the existing platform.
Of course, we've already done a lot of planning and thinking about our global rollout too. We selected Canada and then the U.K. as our first two markets based on our ability to launch well, the competitive dynamics, and our desire to scale quickly. Again, it will be new prospects first, followed by existing clients. We were so encouraged by early indicators that we saw from the new Australian corporate clients that we allocated an incremental AUD 1 million in intangible investment this year, as Selena highlighted earlier, to accelerate this global rollout. We are well underway for planning that rollout to the other global markets, and we'll update you at the full year 2025 results in May on what we plan to do, when, and how.
Moving to slide 20, as we said alongside our trading update, we have revised our fiscal year 25 view for NOI to be stronger in the H2 than the H1 and on PCP to deliver a 28% EBITDA margin for the full year. But we did not revise our medium-term view because we first want to assess the performance from existing Australian clients on the New Client Platform, which will give us a much better feel for the likely level of take-up in our other markets.
We will therefore update that with our fiscal year 25 results in May. We do remain committed to our long-term outlook of more than 15% NOI growth at EBITDA margins of more than 30%. We built our strategy to take advantage of the reputation we have with clients for being great value, reliable, and secure.
And as I've shown with our competitor results, non-FX revenue growth can and does happen despite macro circumstances. That gives us so much more conviction than before. Before I hand back to Ashley, I want to reiterate that both the management and the board are very confident in the strategy. The execution remains good, and we're determined to combine these into a great outcome for investors. Thank you, and I'll now pass back to Ashley to handle Q&A.
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 Lafitani Sotiriou with MST Financial. Please go ahead. Good morning, guys.
Can I just first start off with a point of clarification? On slide 24, I can see that you now include online seller within corporate, but can I just clarify in the footnote for corporate, it says there's about 700 employees, there's about 700 clients on the new client platform. But Skander, you mentioned there's 1,000 on the new client platform in your comments. Is that up until today, or can you just talk us through which number it is? Is it 700 or is it 1,000 on the new client platform? And within the turnover stats that we're looking at on that page, the 700 or 1,000 clients that are on the new client platform, are their stats included in that turnover number? Thank you.
Okay. I'll let us, if it's okay, I'll take that one. So 1,000 clients have access to the new client platform. Of those 1,000, 700 are active. Okay? Those 700 active clients, as we've footnoted, are not included in the 32.7 thousand corporate active clients. So when you include that, that number becomes 33.4. Also, turnover on this slide does not include those clients from that client platform. So if you added that, it would become, as we've footnoted, 11.9. Is that helpful?
I got it. And the expectations going forward, I imagine, as the New Client Platform grows, would that be bundled into the corporate stats or what's the expectation? So will it just be one corporate number, which is online seller, New Client Platform, and your, I guess, legacy or traditional corporate?
Yes, absolutely. So it will all be put in together. We're just in this phase at the moment where, as we're migrating and the revenue on non-FX is starting to pick up, this particular page is built for kind of FX revenue type dimensions, being active clients, transactions, ATVs, that sort of thing. When you start to add in subscriptions and other types of revenue streams, we will need to also give you updated metrics on how we are looking at that portfolio, and we'll do that at the full year result.
Got it. And just moving to my next question. With the transfer of the backbook for the Australian clients and you flagged by Q1 2026, does that mean ultimately every client you have will be in Australia will be on the New Client Platform? Or will you run dual platforms for those that are unwilling? If you're not going to run dual platforms, what are you factoring in for potential leakage from those that may not like the friction of transferring?
Thanks, Lafitani. Maybe I'll take that one. Yes, the plan is to move them all onto the New Client Platform. What we have built in our testing, obviously, cohort by cohort is an automated process so that for the clients, like their beneficiaries are migrated, we can assist them with logons digitally. It can all be done seamlessly. The New Client Platform has to have all the same facilities that the existing platform has. So if the client just wants to do an FX transfer, they can do that. They don't have to take up all the extra features and benefits.
But obviously, that's the reason why we are moving thoughtfully through the migration program and not just sort of putting it all in one go. And each cohort sort of teaches us some things, as well as the existing clients who've already moved across, as well as others who've asked about it in terms of what they value, how they want to do it, and how we can assist those clients to make it as frictionless as possible. But absolutely, it'll be one platform.
Got it. And so when you flag H2, FY25 for UK, Canada, is that when the investment starts or when the rollout starts?
For UK, Canada, the investment's already started. That'll be in their fiscal year 2025 number, the intangible, that AUD 1 million. That supports for new clients to be launched in Canada in March and UK in July.
But what we're also working on is whether there's an accelerated migration program and all the other markets, which we haven't finalized yet. But by the time we get to May of next year, we will have a finalized plan, which we'll share with you, which covers the rest of the markets and the full migration.
Got it. And can I just push one more question? So you talked through the trading environment being up 14% in October versus, I'm not sure, was it September or the September quarter? Can you just talk to a little bit around possibly the U.S. election and since the U.S. election? And I know it's only been weeks sort of or weeks into November, but any commentary around how November's tracking so far?
Sure. So that up 14% was versus September. So October revenue up 14% versus September. November is in line with October. So yes, the U.S. election has, we've seen continued strengthened engagement from clients. We haven't seen a major spike, but we've certainly seen good continued engagement.
Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes from Owen Humphries with Canaccord. Please go ahead.
Can I just a quick question around capital management? Given where the share price is, given where your balance sheet is, given where the free cash flow is expected to be, can you just talk through some of the capital management initiatives you guys are pushing through for the next 12 months? And is M&A still a part of your strategy?
Yep. So a couple of things on capital management. Obviously, share buyback is active and we'll continue to deploy funds there. We continue to pay back the debt as well. We do generate a lot of cash.
The other nice thing is with the debt that we have paid back, we do have some debt capacity. So even if an M&A acquisition came along, and we're always looking, but we always make sure that we're looking for the right asset at the right price, and we make sure that we pay the right price. So if you look at the moment, with current share price where it is, you're probably not going to use scrip to do an M&A acquisition, but you do have some debt capacity. Two times EBITDA in the last 12 months gives you at least a capacity of AUD 92 million that you could do an acquisition with if you found one.
Just a comment you just noticed before around the volumes in the peer set, kind of like for like, holding relatively flat. I know there have been some pricing initiatives by some of your peer sets. Have you kind of seen any impact if you guys had to react or you guys are set fast in your pricing initiatives?
No. In fact, what we see on transactions is they're actually up. So to the extent that there have been, I think it's only one competitor that's actually dropped price as far as I'm aware. And my understanding is their FX revenue has kind of flattened out. So we haven't seen that. Plus, I would say that particular competitor is targeting a much smaller target client than we are. More what we see in the kind of mid-size, we haven't seen any kind of pricing pressure from competition.
All right. Good one. Thanks, guys.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We'll now pause for a short moment to allow questions to be registered. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Malcolm for closing remarks.
Okay. Thank you, Ashley, and thanks everyone for joining the call. We'll look forward to catching up with you in the next week and picking up any other questions that you might have. Thanks very much.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.