I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Skander Malcolm, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Mel, and thank you everyone for joining the call. As Mel mentioned, I'm joined by Selena Verth, our Chief Financial Officer, and Matt Gregorowski, who leads our Investor Relations program with Sedalian Codes. Selena and I will take you through the pages, and then there'll be time for Q&A. The presentation will cover three things: our fiscal year 2025 results and the performance drivers, our financials in more detail, our strategy, and our outlook, and then we'll do Q&A. Let's move to slide four in the pack. The business demonstrated resilience in what was a very unusual macroeconomic environment. The weak business confidence we saw in the first half continued through the second half, with political instability and the prospect of tariffs later in the period adding to uncertainty.
This meant that our results were below our expectations that we set out at the half year, with net operating income of $214.9 million, down 5.5% versus prior corresponding period, an underlying EBITDA of $57.7 million, down 10.7% versus PCP, with an underlying EBITDA margin of 27%. The team worked very hard to drive the business levers within our control while continuing to invest in creating a bold new company that supports our clients in many more areas than FX and risk management. Our margins and cash flows remain very healthy, and we maintain very disciplined cost control, overall cash management, and risk management.
We finished fiscal year 2025 with net cash held of $77.2 million, up $2.5 million from our first half, and that included repaying a further $24 million of outstanding debt through the year, as well as completing an extensive share buyback program, which Selena will cover later. Moving to slide five. We have always set up and run OFX in a sustainable way, which means keeping very disciplined on key financial and operating metrics, especially when external signals are very mixed and volatile, while at the same time continuing to invest in building a competitive advantage over time. Business confidence was subdued, but our small to medium businesses are feeling even more pressure, with SME business confidence declining more significantly in our major markets, as you can see from the data points on the left.
Small and medium businesses saw the interest rate outlook change, cost of goods rise, and whilst inflation moderated, it was persistent and later in the year was even forecast to rise. As I mentioned, political instability and the threat of tariffs drove further uncertainty later in the second half, particularly for our target clients, small and medium businesses who buy or sell cross-border. The chart on the left shows our monthly revenue versus the monthly average over the year, and we do see some variation ordinarily, driven mostly by the number of days in a month or if we see particular events. However, given we have very high recurring revenue, it was unusual for us to see such variation, and in fiscal year 2025, this weak business confidence affected the average transaction values, or ATVs, we typically see unusually across the world.
Given that backdrop, we worked very hard at optimizing our business fundamentals. The metrics on the right-hand side of this page demonstrate the way we run the company sustainably. We drive operating levers that create value over time, cash generation, thoughtful expense management, and risk management designed to support growth whilst keeping the company safe. We worked very hard on execution, led by an experienced and very competent team, and this execution is what has delivered superior EPS accretion on the acquisition of Therma, a fast and very meaningful integration of Patron, and a healthy environment for our employees to do their best work. We also continue to invest in our strategic transformation through the OFX 2.0 strategy, which extends and improves our value proposition and total addressable market, or TAM.
We are acutely aware that a stronger value proposition will grow our client base and the average revenue we generate from each client, which in turn will drive faster growth overall. The board and management team have very high conviction in the path we're taking, underpinned by market examples, detailed internal research, and now also strong external research, which I'll talk to later. Our team of approximately 700 OFXers are engaged, working hard, competing vigorously, and creating value around the world. Turning to slide six. A s I mentioned, our corporate segments saw a 4% decline in revenue versus PCP, driven by a 22.8% decline in ATVs. Pleasingly, whilst we did see some decline in active clients in this segment, transactions were up 24%, confirming clients are very engaged with us during uncertain times.
Looking across the regions, growth in Australia and the U.S. was more than offset by softness in the U.K. and in Canada. It was very encouraging to see our enterprise segment continue to grow, up 17% versus PCP, and more and more contribution coming from new partners as well as from long-standing clients. Our consumer segment was down just 1%, as some high-value use cases such as wealth management returned in the second half. ATVs were up 7.3%, however, transactions were down 6.4%. Moving to slide seven. O ur strategy is very clear on which clients we target with the right value proposition and then how we generate the highest value available from these clients. On the left-hand side, you can see a breakdown of our corporate active clients.
The chart shows that the reduction in active clients has been in our smaller clients that generate less than $4,000 in revenue per annum. More importantly, the cohort of more valuable corporate clients, which we consider to be clients generating more than $4,000 in revenue per annum, is growing as we provide the right value proposition and create the right conditions for them to operate their businesses with us. The organic growth rate of these clients is mid-single digits when you adjust for the clients that are left with some of the Therma traders leaving. Naturally, we want it to grow faster, and we also want to grow active clients overall, but this is the right place for us to be focused first.
As we migrate these clients to the new client platform, the opportunity to grow value from these clients increases, as well as the opportunity to grow the number of clients who deliver significant revenue to the group. The chart on the right shows that at a portfolio level, we are growing the average revenue per client overall, primarily as a result of growing the most valuable clients first. This will be a key reporting metric going forward, as it will demonstrate the incremental value we are generating from NCP. Equally, the total active client base is expected to grow in time as the NCP also gives us access to clients for FX that we were not able to access previously. The growth in average revenue per client, or ARPC, is especially encouraging given most of the cost is fixed, so most of it goes straight to underlying EBITDA.
Over the last five years, we've worked very hard on our platform transformation, and the last year has seen huge progress as we began rolling out new products, features, and services, as you can see on slide nine. Historically, our effort and investment was in building the foundations, things like risk management, onboarding, and payments. In FY 2025, with much of that complete, we were able to focus on the client experience through the New Client Platform, or NCP. We have never delivered more features, more services, and at such speed as we did in fiscal year 2025, with over 2,000 deployments in the fourth quarter alone, up from 87 in the fourth quarter 2024. To deliver great product, we need to be at least as fast as this, and so it's incredibly encouraging to improve that much and to see an increased velocity of deployments in just one year.
This page shows you that some of the products and services already delivered that are gaining traction with clients and driving up the ARPC. They also allow us to scale faster. One achievement we're especially proud of is that we're the first non-bank issuer of corporate cards in Canada with Visa, and this is notable because it improves the returns available and is evidence of the strength of OFX, as we do not need to rely on a bank-sponsored license. It signals our balance sheet strength, our mature risk management programs, and the confidence Visa has in our operational rigor. It also bodes well for our global rollout to the U.K. and Europe, expected to launch by the end of the first quarter of this year.
We have implemented new pricing plans both in Australia and Canada, and we will deploy these in the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. later in the year. In Canada, we launched a cash-back value proposition for our clients, and we're looking at a strong value proposition like this across the U.K., Europe, and the U.S. Having the right value proposition for the market, combined with the operating and financial discipline, gives us confidence to grow with returns in each of our markets. Moving to slide ten, it has been very encouraging to see the response of new clients to the new value proposition. Although we're moving existing clients across very carefully, we're seeing positive early signs from them as well.
On the left, you can see that new clients are already adopting new products at the rate of around one in four, with many clients already adopting more than two products. In fiscal year 2025, we saw non-FX revenue from new clients up at around 27% of new revenue being generated. Note that this was lower than we saw in the first half, but this was only due to a vendor switch that we did in the second half to improve the client experience and to provide a more scalable global solution to the one Patron had used just for Australian clients while they were in startup mode. We expect that revenue to return in fiscal year 2026, along with further non-FX revenue growth.
On the right-hand side, you can see that as of 31st March, we had more than 20% of our Australian corporate active clients on the new client platform, and it has continued to grow since then, as I'll touch on in a moment. The take-up of new products, as well as the revenue from this cohort, continues to build. As planned, the migration accelerated in April and May, and we're past the midway stage now of migrating Australian corporate portfolio. We expect it to be largely complete by the end of this quarter. We did slow it down due to the vendor switch, as we didn't want to migrate them onto a suboptimal platform. As we've migrated more existing Australian clients onto the platform, we continue to get very positive feedback. Now let me hand over to Selena, who will walk through the financial highlights in more detail.
Thank you, Skander. Moving to slide 12, we are a healthy business with strong cash generation, as Skander has already outlined. BN trading income, or revenue, was down 3.4% to $221.9 million. On a constant currency basis, it was down slightly less at 1%. Regionally, APAC was down 1.1%, North America down 1.2%, and EMEA down 7.9%. The second half was a very tough environment, and the threat of tariffs in the fourth quarter exacerbated the uncertainty for many of our corporate clients. February was particularly soft, down 12% on fiscal year 2024, but revenue picked up in March, and this momentum has continued through April. Overall, the second half 2025, BN trading income of $107.4 million was down 6.6% on the prior year and $7.1 million on the first half 2025.
Given the macro backdrop, it was pleasing to see enterprise revenue growth of 17% and consumer stable at negative 1%. Their operating income of $204.9 million was down 5.5%, which was below our expectations. If you exclude the $3.7 million escrow that was included in the first half 2024, NOI was down 3.9%. NOI margins were slightly softer at 56 basis points, down 3 basis points. One basis point is due to escrow included in the fiscal year 2024 result, and the remaining 2 basis points is due to pricing on higher consumer ATVs, along with lower interest rates on client balances. We actively managed our operating expenses, which were $157.2 million, down 3.5% on fiscal year 2024, which I'll talk to in the next slide. Depreciation and amortization increased by 29.4%, reflecting our platform investment in NCP and prior intangible investments.
This resulted in an underlying earnings before tax of $31.7 million, down 23.8% versus fiscal year 2024, and a statutory net profit after tax of $24.9 million, down 20.6% on fiscal year 2024. The tax rate is low at 11.2% due to an ongoing R&D tax benefit, as most of our engineers are based in Australia. The R&D tax benefit for the year was $2.1 million, and as we reported at the half year, we also had $2.3 million of benefits from the prior years. If we exclude all prior year adjustments, the underlying tax rate is 22.4%. As we stated at the half year, we expect the future tax rate to be between 21%-24%, but this will be dependent on R&D spend and future rebates.
We have a strong balance sheet, and our net cash held balance is $77.2 million, up $2.5 million on the first half of 2025, with a very strong second half cash conversion rate. The second half 2025 net cash flows from operating activities were $56.5 million, up from $16 million in the first half of 2025, and we saw full year underlying EBITDA converting at more than 90% to net cash flow from operations. Moving to slide 13, with BN trading income lower than our expectations, we have actively managed our operating expenses. Employment expenses, our largest expense category, was $108.4 million, down 3.7% versus fiscal year 2024. This is due to both our productivity programs delivering, headcount holding flat, and our bonus NSTI provisions reflecting fiscal year 2025 performance.
Employment expenses were $51 million in the second half 2025, which was down from $57.4 million in the first half 2025, reflecting the lower provision for bonuses. We do expect this to increase next year as we meet our targets and invest in accelerated growth, which Skander will take you through. It was pleasing to see technology costs down 7.2% despite running two platforms as we worked through the migration. This is a result of the firm's synergies rolling through and the continuous focus on productivity and spend. Notwithstanding this careful expense management and having two technology platforms, we have had one of our best years for execution, especially on our New Client Platform, which I'll talk to you through later. As markets were uncertain and prospect demand subdued, we closely monitored the promotional spend.
For the $17.4 million spent, we generated $34.4 million in new client revenue, which is a good return. Bad and doubtful debts were $2.1 million for the year, down 42.7%, which is an excellent result in a market where small businesses are facing cost pressures, softening demand, and in an environment where fraud and losses continue to increase across the industry. We continually review and invest in our cyber defense program, as well as we manage our client market exposures to keep our losses within our acceptable tolerance. We continue to invest in fraud prevention, both software and people, to keep fraud losses low. Other costs are up 14%, as we did increase our travel up $700,000 this year to ensure we build our great global culture, and we invested in higher professional fees as we enhanced our product offering.
Moving to slide 14, our intangible investment in fiscal year 2025 was $18.9 million, which is in line with our guidance of $19 million. This has been at a consistent percentage of revenue, but in the higher value areas, as Skander outlined on slide nine, that will drive strong returns as we continue to invest in building a new competitive value proposition and an infrastructure that is scalable and secure. Our investments in fiscal year 2025 have been heavily focused on our new client platform. As you can see from the chart, this was mostly in product and client experience, totaling $13.4 million, or 69% of the overall spend. The execution and velocity of delivery from 150 FTEs in our tech and product is the best we have ever seen, and it gives us conviction to go faster.
Delivery includes NCP is live for new corporate clients in Australia and Canada, and the U.K. is coming soon. We've built a client migration engine, and migrations are well underway for Australian corporate clients and planned for Canadian clients. We have implemented Visa as our new card provider for both physical and virtual cards. We are also the first non-bank issuer in Canada. We continue to work on our accounting integrations with a two-way sync for Xero in place and QuickBooks coming soon. Artificial intelligence for invoice and receipt recognition, which streamlines processes for clients and reduces the need for categorizing expenses. A simplified interface for FX migrated clients and a new advisor portal for accountants. Lastly, a new digital forwards product that will be released on the platform in the coming quarter. Internally, we've done our first transaction, which was exciting to see.
This is a digital product that no one else on a global payments platform has, and it's absolutely critical to providing the fully integrated solution for clients that we strive for. In addition, we continue to invest in risk, data, and security, as we always look to improve our defenses. The reduction in bad debts I mentioned earlier reflects this investment, along with our risk culture. We have also attained ISO 27001, which is a globally recognized standard for managing information security and cybersecurity. We've obtained this certification for all our subsidiaries, which provides all our clients and partners additional reassurance around our cyber defenses, as it provides a framework for managing and mitigating cyber threats. Our payments engine is connected to the NCP for four of our major currencies, and we continue to expand the services as we go live for each region.
This will mean faster and cheaper payments for our clients. Speed and accuracy of payment processing is critical for our clients, and we continue to invest in this area to generate lower banking costs and increase speed. Turning to slide 15, we have a strong, stable balance sheet and continue to be very strong at generating cash. Our net cash held position is $77.2 million. This is cash held for own use and collateral, which is held as deposits with financial institutions. This is down $10.8 million from March of 2024, but up $2.5 million on the first half 2025, as we generated stronger second half cash conversion as expected. The chart on the left shows we continue to have a strong cash conversion rate with our underlying EBITDA of $57.7 million, converting to $72.5 million of net cash flows from operating activities.
First half net operating cash was $16 million, and since then, we've seen a strong second half cash generation of $56.5 million. As we explained at the first half, our other receivables were $7 million higher than normal at 30 September due to a public holiday in Canada, and we had several forwards that were due to mature in the second half of 2025. These two items, combined with tax refunds, generated a stronger second half cash figure, along with strong cash collection from our teams globally from clients. Our collateral and bank guarantees increased from $19.8 million to $26.2 million and is down $2.6 million from the first half of 2025 at $28.8 million. As we manage the additional collateral, we are required to hold for wallets on the NCP. We have continued our debt repayments, with $24 million repaid for the year.
The current loan balance is $20 million. We are in a net asset position and on track to repay the debt facility by the end of fiscal year 2026, subject to our capital management program considerations. Note we have paused the debt repayment in the first half of 2026 as we seek to preserve cash through these volatile markets. During periods of high volatility, our natural netting in the books, driven by the globally diverse revenues we generate, is a great advantage for us. We have met all margin calls with our 11 counterparties. We run daily client margin call reviews and have reviewed all the top clients to understand the impact of volatility and tariffs. Our outstanding client margin call position is less than $200,000 with minimal risk, a very healthy position given the size of a forward book.
We have completed our share buyback and in fiscal year 2025 bought 9.2 million shares for a total of $13.7 million, with $3.3 million deployed in the first half and the remaining $10.4 million deployed in the second half. We actively manage our capital and in fiscal year 2026 have shifted to a faster organic growth strategy, which requires additional investment, which Skander will outline in the next section. While we are not renewing the share buyback at this time, we continue to review the opportunity through fiscal year 2026. 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. Now let me address the strategy for OFX, including our outlook. Moving to slide 17, many investors will be familiar with this page, as we've shared it previously.
It lays out how our strategy has evolved as OFX 2.0, highlighting the outcomes we're targeting, which are scaling in our major markets, focusing on ideal client profiles or ICPs who generate the revenues akin to the more valuable corporate clients that I referred to earlier with an ARPC of more than $4,000, more products to help businesses manage their operations internationally on a modern and scalable client platform, which will mean we grow revenue faster and generate better margins over time. Given the potential value we felt we could unlock, we commissioned a global strategy leader with depth in payments and software to assess the market opportunity through an independent study. We felt that with this, we could also address the questions of whether we should continue to invest in this opportunity, how we should invest, and how fast we should invest to generate the best return.
That study was concluded in late March, and we discussed it as a board as we finalized our approach to fiscal year 2026 and beyond. It not only validated the strategy we had in place and what we had already seen from our competitors who had put a version of it into place, but it very clearly and unequivocally supports the accelerated NCP investment we are making. You've heard us talk about a bigger global FX TAM, and you've also heard us say that there is very little industry data to draw from. What the study has given us is a much clearer view of the opportunity that is available. Through 2.0, this opportunity is doubled, but I'll touch more on that shortly. Moving to slide 18, we were not surprised by what the study told us in terms of how our 2.0 strategy solves more client problems.
Firstly, as this page shows, it addresses the reality for our target ICPs, which is that payments and international payments are important, but that they are one of many pain points that exist for these businesses. In simple terms, even just in payments, clients need to get paid. They need to manage flows and liquidity, and then they need to make payments or pay out. We were largely focused at the end of that value chain, i.e., pay out. Even in that section, we really only handled some of the payouts, largely the bank transfers. In fact, businesses want to pay out in many ways, including via card, for example, which we were planning to do but did not yet provide. Further, when they pay out, they have to reconcile to their accounts payable system. We did not provide that either.
Further, we only focused on international payments, not domestic payments, meaning that whatever system they use, we only covered part of their needs. Just in the payout section, we have added those capabilities. Integration with accounts payable and domestic payments, and new clients are taking that up, as I have mentioned. Next, we have always offered risk management for our clients, unlike many of our competitors, but we did not offer them the convenience of multi-currency accounts to store various currencies or create budgets and spend controls, which allow CFOs or AP functions the ability to control who can pay out and how much, and of course, to whom. With the New Client Platform, we can do all that, and again, it is resonating. Finally, we had to set up for a subset of our corporate segment the ability to receive payments in various currencies.
For example, I've talked about this for sellers on various e-commerce platforms we support as critical. Our new platform does this at scale and provides them with individual accounts, making it much easier to connect across this chain and much easier for their clients to do business with them. Why does this matter? Moving to slide 19, as I've mentioned, the study allowed us much more accurately to understand what the total addressable market or TAM was for these new products and services. On the left-hand side, you can see that the TAM in the 2.0 world is around $384 billion of revenue, and that includes the revenue of $66 billion for our target SMEs in our core markets.
On a like-for-like basis, what the right-hand side shows is that by adding the products and services that tackle the other pain points, i.e., getting paid and managing flows and liquidity, our TAM for target ICPs increases by 94% from $34 billion in the 1.0 world to $66 billion in the 2.0 world. This is a dramatic increase in what we're competing for. Moving to slide 20, in addition to the huge TAM and the expansion in TAM, we were very encouraged to see external validation of what growth fintechs could expect by market. The study estimated market shares and growth rates for our major markets for our target ICPs. The analysis suggests fintechs will grow at between 10-15% CAGR between fiscal year 2023 and fiscal year 2028 in those markets of fairly low market penetration.
Competitively, it was also somewhat surprising but encouraging to see that whilst fintechs are taking share of a lot of the new SMEs, products, and services, the majority of SMEs are still with banks, with the size of that share of banks anywhere from 77%-87% in our major markets. There remains a wonderful opportunity, and we are largely competing with each other to take it from banks. These facts alone, the increase in TAM, and the fact that we are competing with other fintechs to take share from banks gave us conviction to accelerate our efforts to roll out the NCP globally. The next question is, how do we unlock that opportunity for OFX? We were very keen to understand why target ICPs were not already switching.
Moving to slide 21, the study was important in further building our conviction to accelerate because it confirmed that our target clients are very much ready to switch to fintechs so long as we can provide an integrated solution. That was a very key finding. Previously, we had always provided a superior product in FX and superior service through our digital plus human platform, but the reluctance to switch was because target clients are looking for solutions across a range of problems or pain points, not just FX. To unlock this appetite to switch, we have the integrated product set, a very contemporary and secure platform in NCP, and the FX and risk management is actually a differentiator in the sector, especially versus banks, but also versus many fintechs who focus on payments or spot FX only.
Further, we have the team, a well-established global footprint, a strong balance sheet, and cash generation to act boldly to take this opportunity. As I mentioned earlier, we have set up and run OFX for the medium term and have very disciplined financial controls and knowledge to consider when investing. Considering how much to invest and how quickly was a very carefully considered exercise. Moving to slide 22, here are the main reasons we have chosen to accelerate our investment. Firstly, as we have shared, the ARPC of a client who is more deeply engaged with more products is higher. To have more clients with a higher ARPC will drive top-line growth faster and underlying EBITDA margin expansion. For example, we already see that with our new clients, the growth in non-FX revenue is faster than FX, and it is at a higher NOI margin.
We previously shared that in looking at public competitors. On our current corporate clients, the ARPC is $4,200, and that includes only 1% non-FX revenue, as you can see on the left-hand side. Growth in non-FX revenue at stronger NOI margins grows NOI and underlying EBITDA margins. We expect to achieve 10% or more in non-FX revenue by fiscal year 2028. Illustratively, if we got to the levels of ARPC generated by our competitors, longer term we can generate 40% more revenue from the same clients. The sooner we're able to provide the expanded product offering, the better. However, to capture this upside, we need to invest a further $29 million in fiscal year 2026, with $24 million of that in OFX and $5 million in CapEx. This includes investment in the accelerated platform rollout, our go-to-market strategy, and our commercial resources to drive faster growth.
This investment is expected to increase marginally in fiscal year 2027 before normalizing in fiscal year 2028. Unlike others, we can self-fund this growth, which is absolutely critical. We have already shared that we have seen very unusual and challenging economic conditions for our clients, and this has affected their confidence and thus activity. By unlocking new products and services, we are not relying on favorable economic circumstances. We are taking share from banks, and we are not reliant on new debt or equity to make that happen. If we were, then our return equation would carry a very different risk weighting. From a capital management perspective, we have, as Selena has mentioned, balanced debt repayment, a share buyback program, and intangible investment to optimize returns. This investment in this environment is, we believe, the best allocation of our capital.
Finally, on a straight ROIC basis, we looked at the returns this investment profile would deliver. In other words, doing it in an accelerated fashion would generate and compare that to doing it more slowly. Doing it quickly provided the strongest return because the extra revenue combined with the reduced client churn delivers the fastest and best ROIC. This makes a lot of sense when we go back and reflect on the study that showed the share is with banks, but we are encouraged that we are competing to dislodge it with fintechs. It is also consistent with what we see in active clients. If we lose clients, but we can grow ARPC, we will struggle to grow overall. A stronger value proposition delivered quickly protects the existing revenue better. Further, a longer execution timeframe always creates other risks, both technical and operational.
If we're too slow, we'll waste this opportunity and risk competitors catching up on our product capability. Going faster is what gets us to more than 15% NOI growth by fiscal year 2028. This is underpinned by more NOI from both FX and non-FX, lower churn, more active clients, and higher ARPC. Ultimately, the kind of longer-term returns that will be very attractive for our shareholders. Moving to slide 23, the execution in fiscal year 2024 and 2025, whether it be an integration of Therma or Patron or the rollout of a new client platform, has given us confidence in the accelerated global rollout. This slide lays out the timeline for delivery. We expect to have all countries live with new corporate clients by the end of this fiscal year.
This is, as ever, subject to regulatory approval and vendor support, but we are confident in this given our experience thus far. It is very encouraging that as recently as last week, we received approval from the Central Bank of Ireland for our European expansion. We also expect to complete the migration of our corporate clients to each of our major regions by the end of fiscal year 2026, and again, subject to regulatory and vendor support, with the smaller countries being completed early in fiscal year 2027. All of this will be complemented by ongoing product enhancements, so the client experience will continue to improve as we execute this migration. Over the course of fiscal year 2026, we're also considering the best approach for our consumer segment, and we'll update you further on what we intend to do in fiscal year 2027 and when sometime in fiscal year 2026.
Moving now to our outlook on slide 25. In early fiscal year 2026, we've seen the conditions that drove weak business confidence, being mixed interest rate outlook, fall in consumer demand, and cost pressures persist in most of our major markets. The tariff commentary and actions have added to that. Against that backdrop, we cannot provide an outlook for fiscal year 2026 with any certainty. We will continue to monitor global markets, and if we are able, we will provide an updated outlook for fiscal year 2026 in the medium term. However, it's important to note that we continue to target growth in NOI, and we will work exceptionally hard to deliver that. This year has started well, with April up on PCP despite one less trading day.
In fact, as we showed on slide 5, we produced $21.2 million of fee and trading income despite one less trading day. We will maintain our disciplined approach to capital management, including considering future buyback activity with the current program now complete. The investments we are making means we are not targeting operating leverage in fiscal year 2026 or fiscal year 2027. As we touched on earlier, we have always believed in targeting operating leverage, but we took this decision to not target it in the short term based on the deep understanding we have of how valuable the opportunity is and of the strategy, team, and platform we have to unlock it and the consequent ROIC and shareholder value we can create by investing this way.
We expect that it will make us a much more valuable company and deliver the top-line growth and underlying EBITDA margin we've been targeting. Before I hand back to Mel, I want to reiterate that both the management and board are very confident in the strategy. The execution remains good, and we are determined to combine these into a great outcome for investors. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Mel 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 Cameron Halket with Wilsons. Please go ahead.
Hi, Skander. Hi, Selena. Can I just start, I suppose, around the OpEx surprise being a bit more than expected? Appreciate your comments, Skander, on the results of the study and moving faster, but I suppose what's changed in the reinvestment profile here to get the same targeted NOI growth % uplift that was targeted originally? I suppose targeting 15% growth, you'd set out targets for that previously, and now today you've kind of reiterated them, but further down the line, and it's come with a lot more spin. I suppose what's changed just beyond moving faster?
Yeah, thanks, Cam. The way I would characterize it is we were moving forward to generating those returns based on the profiles that we outlaid, but fundamentally, we were also assuming a faster NOI growth and operating leverage along the way. Now, what we're saying is because it's very hard to predict the, let's call it the core FX piece, we're unable to commit to that, but we do believe that that OpEx spend is effectively brought forward off OpEx spend. The incremental bit is really around the study, and the work we were seeing with clients was really helping us understand investing in what we would call go-to-market programs.
That is commercial resources, software to help us capture prospects and move them through the funnel more quickly, and we know now that that is actually faster returning for us over the medium term. I guess it's the understanding of how those levers are operating that give us more confidence to do that, but I don't know if there's anything else you want to add.
Yeah, Skander mentioned the things that we are investing in in our growth plans. Obviously, there's more people, whether it's product, tech, or sales. Increasing the promo spend to really capture those non-FX products and go faster there. Implementing some tech to really identify and pull through our target ICPs through the conversion funnels and make sure we onboard them at scale and a little bit of cost of running the two platforms. It's everything that we said before, but just going faster.
Yeah. Okay. I suppose, as you've mentioned, that you're going to target growth in NOI for the coming year. Appreciate the state of the world and where it is. I suppose some of the pieces that make up NOI, Selena, like we assume interest income will go backwards again year on year, but NCP will make a much higher contribution than the $1.6 million, I think it was, this year. Just understanding some of those would be helpful, please.
Yep. Interest income was down in the second half versus the first because of rate cuts. Yes, if rates go down, the interest income will go down. The only thing offsetting that is the growth in client wallet balances and cash balances. That has not outgrown the interest rate cuts that we saw in the second half, but as we start to expand and push the wallets throughout all of the different regions, that is an absolute possibility that the interest income grows faster because of the wallet balances. Obviously, the non-FX revenue of $1.6 million is good.
With everything we're doing and rolling out the platform, just gone live in Canada, and they're seeing really good progress. We're going to go live in the U.K. That number should grow, and it's growing off a very small base, and we're excited to see our customers take that up. New customers, but also migrated customers. We are expecting growth in non-FX revenue. We're expecting growth in the average revenue per client, particularly in corporate. We are expecting to win new corporates. We just can't predict at the moment with the current FX volatility, the day-to-day, particularly the backbook, how that might trade.
Yep. And just lastly, help us understand, I suppose, behavior across February, March, and April. I mean, I would have thought the tariff threats, given some of the stuff we saw out of some global retailers and things, that corporate clients might have been front-running tariffs, lifting ATVs temporarily for OFX, as well as demand for higher margin forwards. It kind of obviously appears that did not occur, but then April has bounced back. It would be good to understand, I suppose, the corporate customer psyche at the moment and what you are seeing there.
Yeah, maybe I will take that one, Cam. What we saw in February was corporate clients were very pessimistic, and partially because what they told us was it was exceptionally unclear exactly when tariffs would be implemented, exactly what the level of tariffs were. Do not forget, SMEs, particularly, are right at the very forefront of wearing tariffs.
They do not typically have pricing power to pass that on to their clients, as an example. They continue to trade, and as we shared, actually, corporate transactions were up over 20%, but the value of the transactions was smaller, so they were really kind of being very careful about larger purchases, particularly. As you say, what sort of played out over then March and April was that that activity kind of picked up, and in April, we really did see all over the world, and in both corporate and consumer segments, a huge kind of sense of, "Okay, now we feel great again because we are a bit clearer on the way this is going to play out." That is why those April revenues were so strong, because what our clients were telling us anyway was they were feeling more confident to make their plans as small businesses.
Yep. Okay. I'll pop back in the queue. Thank you for that.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Please limit yourself to three questions per person. Your next question comes from Lafitani Sotiriou with MST. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. So I wanted to follow up on from the last set of questions, but also try to unpack some of the revenue guidance by what's implied by FI 2028 numbers. Now, I understand that you've got very clear cost guidance, and it's a bit uncertain the timing of revenue, but can we just be clear on some of this? Are you anticipating from the level of investment the revenue to follow?
For example, where you have in one of the presentation slides that other income to go from 1% to 10% + in corporate FI 2028, that kind of implies at least $15 million more revenue over that period, over the next few years. If you look at your guidance FI 2028, 30% EBITDA margins, given what we understand around the cost, that also implies double that number in terms of more than enough to offset your cost growth that we are seeing. Can you just talk to us about how firm FI 2028 guidance is and just give us a little bit more color, confidence around, yes, is it just you are uncertain about the timing exactly of when that revenue will come through, but you are confident in that additional revenue still coming through? Thank you. That is my first question. Thanks.
Yeah. Obviously, the 2028 guidance, we've got models. We've done it a few different ways. We've triangulated on it. It was a great exercise. The consulting company that we had come in and have a look at the opportunity gave us even more conviction that the future is bright, right? They looked at the opportunity, reinforced the strategy that we've got, reinforced the direction we're going, reinforced there's a great opportunity in the non-FX revenue in the regions that we have. That is why we feel great about that long-term guidance. Obviously, in current market conditions, it's very hard to provide guidance on the revenue line. Obviously, to hit the long-term guidance, we are expecting growth, right? We want to grow revenue. We want to grow. You can see that obviously we'll be growing non-FX revenue. We'll be growing corporate revenue.
We've always said consumers like low single digit, and enterprise had a great year last year. If you look at slide five and you can see that volatility, especially when the trade tariffs came in, that's just a bit we can't predict, right? All things being equal, we should be striving for growth, and that will build over time up to that 15%. What we're just struggling with, especially as we live through the January, February, March timeframe, is it's very hard to predict in the current market given the tariffs and how much that can change, particularly where our books are around the world. Now, it's wonderful that we have a globally diversified revenue stream. It absolutely helps be able to predict our revenue better, but we just can't predict when those tariff changes are coming through.
All things being equal, we are expecting growth in NOI, and it builds up to that 15%. We've given you a few of those building blocks. We've given you some of the new metrics that we're looking at. A very healthy growth in the average revenue per client. We want to see that increase over time.
Just to be clear, this isn't a . This is a follow-up. This isn't my second question, but just to be clear, so is this, are you considering this step changes as growth CapEx? Like this is to grow the business. It's going to bring additional revenue because it seems like the way the share price is reacting, that you guys aren't confident in that additional revenue coming through, even though there's implied guidance.
You guys to get the 30% EBITDA margins FI 2028 with that extra cost, it kind of implies EBITDA of around $77 million broadly, right? Give and take depending where the cost base goes. You guys have got that on the table. I understand the timing may be an issue, but I'm just not getting a hearing from you confidence that this is growth CapEx, that you're confident that this is going to grow your revenue over the next few years. You're just not sure on the timing. Is it a timing issue, or is it a confidence issue? Can you just clarify that?
Yeah, maybe I can jump in there just to build on Selena's point. If you track back this time last year, we did provide guidance, and we were quite specific: short term, medium term, long term.
Unfortunately, we were very transparent around the assumptions that underpin that. Unfortunately, those assumptions were wrong, and they continue to gyrate. Even if you take inflation, for example, it tracked down in the first half and tracked back up in the second in pretty much all of our major markets, same with interest rate outlooks. That does have an effect on, let's call it, the core FX components. The confidence in the non-FX growth is very high. The reason for that, to Selena's point, is A, the study, but B, what we're actually already seeing from clients.
Here in Australia, for example, I was contacted by a client who was part of one of our inactive clients, had gone to one of our competitors that you would know very well, has come back, has already issued multiple cards, and pointed out the things that the competitor does not have. We have seen prospects. I think our largest prospect who had been targeted by us on an FX basis for over three years now has over 211 cards. We are also seeing, for example, conversion rates in Canada already at double where we were, and that is conversion rate of prospects through to clients who are ready to double. We have very, very high conviction in what we are seeing on that non-FX side.
It's just, to Selena's point, if we went out and said, "Here's what that profile is going to look like, half by half or quarter by quarter or even year by year at this point," it would be such a low confidence interval in the core FX bit, and that's still obviously going to be the largest bit in the short term. It just wouldn't make sense. Let me also reiterate that if we feel like the market conditions stabilize, so to speak, we would love to put more clear guidance back out into the market. That's our starting position here, which is where we were last year. We're just dealing with what we're actually seeing at the FX level.
Okay. Can I move on to the second question? I understand not having the confidence to put the revenue guidance in the market, but since your last update, given all the volatility that's been around, it's pretty staggering that you haven't provided a market update within six months, really, since your last result, given all this volatility. Almost every other company, every other fintech, every financial has given an update through this tariff uncertainty. Are you able to commit to giving us monthly revenue similar to what you've got on slide five so that we can just work it out? We can just see it from month to month rather than waiting another six months to see how it may be tracking until you reach a point where you can give us greater clarity and at least do quarterly updates.
It's just pretty staggering. We can't get anything for six months. Is that something you guys will consider?
No, I mean, we obviously want to make sure that within the guidelines of guidance that we operate under under the ASX existing rules, we provide any guidance or updates that are material, and we meet as a continuous disclosure committee to do that. In fact, many of our investors asked us to move away from providing quarterly updates. We do not intend to do that unless, as I said, there is an opportunity for us to then have a bit more certainty in what that outlook is. That is what we want to do. As soon as we can, we will revert to that standing.
I do not know, you will not give monthly updates given there is no revenue guidance. Given we can see that it started off really well in April, you're not going to tell us how May or June's going, possibly for another six months. Are we waiting another six months until the next update?
No, Laf, remember the AGMs in August.
Okay. All right. Just my final question. One of the things, comments you said around the board, board being very confident in the strategy that you have. You've got net cash over $50 million. Typically, when a board's very confident in their strategy and your share price is on its knees, they aren't shying away from a buyback, particularly with a really strong balance sheet. There's no need to be paying off the little balance of debt you've got left. Why isn't the board, if it's got confidence, backing its own confidence and strategy with a buyback?
Yeah. We do need the cash to do the organic growth strategy. The buyback. Also, the other thing to note, Laf, in this volatile market, cash is king, okay? Cash is absolutely critical. There was another competitor on the London markets that got on the wrong side of that and had huge troubles on margin calls, everything else. At the moment, cash is king, especially in these volatile markets, which is one of the reasons why we've said that we're not continuing the buyback in the first half. One, it's a volatility and may preserve the cash. Two, we want to invest in organic growth, which is great. If we could do both, we will. We'll consider that as we go. Also, we've got that debt to pay back, which does come current next financial year.
We are considering all options, but really, at the moment, the reason for the no buyback is really for those volatile markets, conserve the cash, make sure we've got lots of cash. If the markets go volatile again, we want to be able to post that collateral, keep trading. Others weren't able to do that in the last few months.
Selena, you've prepaid a stack of debt, over $50 million in the last three years. What metrics? Most financials give us metrics that we can use to work out what's a healthy buffer. Whereas you guys have $50 million net cash, I mean, how much buffer do you need, right? Why can't you give us some metrics that we can use to go, "All right, that's enough." They're out there at their buffer of what we consider a reasonable amount. I mean, markets are volatile all the time, and you're in the business of this. Can you give us some guidelines, perhaps, because we see it as huge?
Yeah. Laf, and we have talked about that before. We're not afraid to talk about that. A number of years ago, we were definitely talking about what the question we get is, "What is the working capital you need to run the business?" These days, the working capital to run the business is around $20 million-$25 million just because the wallet balances are a little bit more tricky than what they used to be in the past, but we're getting better and better by the day on how we manage that cash. Remember, you want to be able to post collateral. We've got times go volatile.
Years ago, before our time, I think it was the first in the first Brexit vote, the company had to post collateral to keep trading. You have a baseline of working capital that you need. Then you want to keep, in high volatile times, some cash there to post collateral if you need it. My guide for the business is working capital is around $20 million-$25 million. That's what we kind of manage to.
I mean, you're well within that. I mean, if it's $25 million, you've got heaps of headroom, right? I just don't understand what I'm missing. Why the board is so confident, very confident in their strategy, and yet they're stepping away from a buyback when your stock's down to an EV, the DA multiple of two and a half times, three times. It doesn't make sense. If you've just given me what the parameters are, this huge headroom, what are we missing?
I think, Laf, just remember that what we've said is we're not doing a buyback now. It doesn't mean we won't recommence the buyback sometime in 2026. What Selena also said is right now, you've got a particularly unusual set of market conditions, which mean that having cash available, either for collateral or growth investment, is really, really valuable. That's what we've determined to do at this time. It doesn't mean we'll never do another buyback. We'll look at that just in the same way when we feel more confident on a revenue outlook. We look at providing a clearer outlook again. Right now, that's the reality.
When we talk to banks and we look at competitors' banking arrangements and so on, it is very clear to us, and our banks are very clear with us too, in a very supportive way, that they like the way we are managing cash, and that is really, really critical to our business model.
I mean, the banks are one thing, but your shareholders are another. I mean, do you think your shareholders are happy with the way that you are managing cash?
In the last 12 months, the feedback that we have got is the balance of buyback, intangible investment, and repaying debt is a reasonable balance. Obviously, we have to go back to shareholders now, which is what we're doing, to say, "Looking forward in these circumstances, we don't plan to do a buyback right now, but if circumstances change, it'll get reconsidered." Obviously, as Selena talked about in her section, we bought back 9.3 million shares. It's not like the company is shy to do a buyback. We'll follow through on that. It's just right now, it isn't the best thing.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Cameron Halket with Wilsons. Please go ahead.
Two very quick follow-ups. Around the non-FX revenue FI 2028 of around 10%, just confirming that's the subscription fees, that's physical card revenues. That's not the entirety of the NCP contribution given you have FX revenue from that as well. Correct?
Yes. Yes, that's correct. You'll have your FX revenue from the NCP, and then, as you mentioned, the non-FX is the more things like subscriptions, cards, interchange, fund by card type things.
Yep. Thank you. Just the piece around consumer. Can you give us a bit of an idea of what you're referring to here? Like I said, selling the bulk is reinvesting back in it. What's some of the opportunities that FX is evaluating?
I mean, what we are looking at right now, and we've done some high-level work in the past on as well, is we've got a valuable high-value consumer business. In fact, in the external study, we even looked at what's the split in TAM between high value and low value on the consumer side. We're building up some knowledge.
Effectively, what we're saying in this is we are going to do some more detailed work and discuss with the board how do we want to take consumer forward. That could be a range of different outcomes. We need to do that analysis properly before we kind of come back to you and update the market. Our starting position is the high-value consumer kind of segment, if you like, is valuable. It generates good cash. It's distinctive relative to others. Obviously, NCP at a product level really closes the gap to the folks who are more focused on consumer that we have today. Most of those competitors that are consumer-facing would have multi-currency wallets, cards attached, and they're growing their customer numbers in consumer. That is obviously one of the considerations.
Yep. Just confirming there could be the opposite end of the spectrum of exiting consumer or selling the bulk. Is that a possibility?
Of course, it's a possibility, but it's not one that we would regard as probable at this point.
Okay. That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Malcolm for closing remarks.
Thank you, Mel. And thanks, everyone, for joining. I'll just sum it up by kind of covering three reasons why we, including the board, are more confident now than we were even six months ago. First of all, the external data that we now have confirms a 94% increase in TAM, that the switching propensity of SMEs and our target clients is very high. 77% are still with banks. And that the revenue potential, especially as we benchmark competitors, is very high.
That's the first reason, the data. The second is the client reactions. I can't emphasize enough because I have been on a lot of these onboarding calls. I listen to the calls, so does Selena, so does the leadership team. Things like the conversion rates going up, Prospex taking 211 cards. We are very confident in the client reaction. Third of all, the execution of the teams in the last two years on platform and product has gotten better and better. If we felt that investing came with a huge execution risk, we just wouldn't have the courage, if you like, to do it. Those are the reasons why we are going down this path, and we really appreciate your support as we do that. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.