Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Pacific Current Group Investor Presentation Call for the 2025 Financial Year. Again, by way of introduction, my name is Michael Clarke and I'm an Executive Director and the Acting Chief Executive of Pacific Current Group. I joined the board of Pacific Current Group in February 2024 as a Non-Executive Director and transitioned to my current role in July of 2024. I'm joined on the call by Ashley Killick, the Chief Financial Officer of Pacific Current Group. Ashley joined PAC over six years ago. In our full-year update to shareholders in August last year, we highlighted that PAC was committed to taking actions that would unlock shareholder value and we would report the progress made to achieve this goal. We are gratified to report that the momentum developed in the 2024 financial year has continued throughout this financial year FY 2025.
If we turn to slide three in the presentation pack, Pacific Current Group is pleased to report on the company's interim results for the 12 months ending 30th June, 2025. Key highlights over the 12-month period included the successful completion of an equal access off-market share buyback in March 2025, which enabled PAC to buy back just over 22 million ordinary shares at $12 per share with a total value of close to AUD 265 million . This represented over 42% of issued capital at that time. Following completion of the buyback, PAC now has 30.15 million ordinary shares on issue. The share buyback achieved several important objectives, including improving capital efficiency, providing liquidity to selling shareholders, and reducing the share count for the benefit of remaining shareholders.
For the FY 2025 year, Pacific Current is declaring a final dividend of $0.28 per share unfranked with a record date of 8th September, 2025. The final dividend brings total dividend per share for the financial year to $0.43, and this is an increase of over 13% on the full-year dividend declared in the FY 2024 financial year. Pacific Current Group also declared a statutory net profit of $58.2 million for the period, driven by uplifts in the fair value of assets in the portfolio and the gain on disposal of selected assets. This compares with a statutory net profit of AUD 110 million in the previous financial year. Pacific Current Group also recorded a decline in underlying net profit to AUD 26 million for the 2025 financial year, and this compares with AUD 32.2 million in the previous financial year.
This year's result was driven by the disposal of assets, which resulted in a high level of cash in the portfolio. Underlying earnings per share declined to AUD 0.56 from AUD 0.62 in the previous financial year. Importantly, cost-saving initiatives implemented in the financial year positively supported the result with a close to 60% reduction in corporate costs during the period. It is also worth highlighting that although underlying net profit and earnings per share declined year on year, again, the number of ordinary shares on issue was significantly reduced following the off-market share buyback, as I've discussed, to just over 30 million shares from previously over 52 million.
Hi, sorry, but I think we lost the call there.
Please go ahead.
I'll continue. Yeah? Okay. I've just finished discussing underlying cost savings of 60% compared to the previous financial year, which obviously is good progress. I wanted to move on to just a summary quickly of the transaction activity over the period because it was another very, very busy 12 months for the company. As you may recall, in July 2024, Pacific Current Group announced the sale of 100% of its interest in Carlisle to Abacus Life. Pacific received 1.97 million newly issued Abacus bonds with a coupon rate of 9.875% at an aggregate par value of $49.2 million. In addition, Pacific Current Group received 1.36 million shares of Abacus common stock. At the completion of the sale on 3 December, 2024, the aggregate net proceeds to Pacific Current Group resonated with $60.3 million.
In August 2024, PAC announced the sale of 55% of its equity stake in Victory Capital's Management Company and 24.9% of tax future carrier entitlements in VC funds yet to be launched. Pacific Current Group receives an upfront consideration of $33.9 million for transaction costs, 75% in cash and 25% in Janet Henderson stock. Pacific Current Group can also receive an additional up to $27.7 million earnout payment based on certain gross revenue milestones measured in calendar years 2025 and 2026. Finally, the agreement also includes provisions for the potential sale of the remaining 45% of Victory Park Capital Management Company and an incremental portion of carry of interest in the future. Both the Carlyle and Victory Park Capital Management Company transactions are now settled with the receipt of all required regulatory approvals.
In December 2024, PAC announced the redemption of its interest in Banner Oak Capital Partners. PAC originally invested $35 million in Banner Oak Capital Partners in January 2022. The redemption of $19.1 million together with $15.9 million historical distributions from Banner Oak Capital Partners resulted in a full return of PAC invested capital on a pre-tax basis. Also, in December 2024, PAC disposed of all of its equity interest in Neris NCI. Finally, in terms of activity for the year, pre the buyback, in February 2025, PAC agreed to restructure its 100% equity ownership in Aethir Investment into a revenue share agreement supporting both stronger incentive and greater alignment with rate management to execute on their growth initiatives. PAC retained a liquidation rate of 24.9% should the company be sold.
As a consequence of all this activity and progress through the year, fair value assets recognized have completed sales vests during the period and related consideration. PAC's fair value estimate of net asset value increased to AUD 15.51 per share at 30th of June. This estimate exceeds the statutory net asset value by AUD 0.76 per share and compares with the fair value estimate of the net asset value of AUD 13.47 per share on 30th of June, 2024. This is an increase of over 15%. I'd now like to hand over to Ashley to cover financials for the year.
Thanks, Michael. As Michael said, like FY 2024, the current year FY 2025 has been a period of great change at PAC . Over the past two years, we have fully realized our investments in GQG Palante, Cora, Proterra, Banna Oak, and Carlisle, while partially realizing our investments in Pennybacker and Victory Park. Obviously, these realizations have impacted our revenue from good teams. On slide four, we have a summary of the underlying results. As a result of these disposals, management fee revenue is down 57.6% over the prior comparative period in U.S. dollars. In FY 2024, performance fees were AUD 11.3 million , while in the current period, it was AUD $8 million . This is largely attributed to Rock Group and VPC Holdco.
Over the past few reporting periods, the listed investments held by VP C have had negative mark-to-market losses, but in the current period, they recorded a net gain of AUD 1.6 million . The recent disposals have also resulted in PAC receiving various financial assets as consideration. As Michael said, we received Abacus bonds and shares as well as Janet Henderson stock flowing from the Carlisle and VPC transactions. In addition, we also held shares in GQG listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. The reduction from the prior period of AUD 13 million -AUD 3.8 million is effectively because FY 2024 included the dividends from GQG Partners' investment. In May 2024, we outsourced the investment management function. This has resulted in us significantly reducing our corporate costs by incurring an investment management fee.
For the current year, we saw a charge of AUD 2.4 million . The externalization of the investment management function and the closure of the distribution activities has resulted in a significant reduction in corporate costs, as Michael noted. The cash realized from the boutique realizations has led to higher interest income being generated, while the U.S. dollar denominated debt that we hold was influenced by the increase in the facility in September 2023, which led to an increase in underlying interest expense. Interest rates have fallen over this period, and that has mitigated the effect. It is effectively still sitting at 6.7%. Overall, underlying net profit after tax and earnings per share have declined. Flowing from these effects, the board has previously advised that it is our intention to have a dividend payout ratio in the range of 60%- 80% of underlying profit after tax.
As such, the FY 2025 final dividend has been increased to AUD 0.28 per share, bringing the total for FY 2025 to AUD 0.43 per share. This would equate to 62% of underlying net profit after tax. This dividend will, however, be fully unfranked. I'll turn now to page five, which is effectively a graphical depiction of the revenue trends that I've just described. Turning to page six is the ultimate balance sheet. We prepare this ultimate balance sheet for management purposes effectively to provide an extreme view of PAC as it deconsolidates the results of our operating subsidiaries. Historically, it's been Aethir and Strategic . Given the transition of Aethir from subsidiary to CSOU through profit and loss, this analysis won't be necessary on a go-forward basis.
Briefly running through the lines, obviously, the realization of the assets has seen our cash balance rise significantly over the past two years, but the share buyback that happened in this period has seen that cash reserve reduce. Even so, we still have cash reserves of AUD 138 million. In addition, we also have the deferred consideration arising from the partial disposal of Pennybacker , which is due to be settled in May 2026. As mentioned previously, we've borrowed $41 million which is shown in other non-current liabilities. It is secured by a corresponding U.S. dollar bank deposit, which is included in other non-current assets. During the period, we impaired our investment in Aethir . As such, the intangibles were written off and the investment in Aethir Investment was transferred to CSO through profit and loss, which resulted in the investment in subsidiaries line disappearing.
The disposal of Banner Oak and Victory Park partially has resulted in a significant reduction in the investments in associates. The remaining interest in Victory Park is now classified as fair value through profit and loss. This has led to an increase in the value of this asset class. To highlight the securities PAC has received as consideration from the sale of Carlyle, Pennybacker and V P C we've separated in this analysis these assets as financial assets. I'll turn to page eight now. This shows the movements in net assets on a book value and share value basis. Preparing our statutory accounts, we undertake evaluation exercise to consider whether any assets are impaired and to determine a value for financial assets recorded at fair value.
This process is driven by the accounting standards and is not intended to provide a precise value at which an investment would be realized at. Further details of this are detailed on page 26 of the presentation, which I encourage you all to read. The center columns of the table summarize the values resulting from this process. This suggests that the fair value net asset value per share has increased from $13.47- $15.51. A significant proportion of this asset base is in cash and financial assets. I'll now hand back to Michael.
Mr. Clarke, please go ahead.
Thanks, Ashley. Thanks for handing back. Turning to slide 12 in the presentation pack, we'll now look at the outlook for the new financial year, current financial year. Pacific Current Group management expects to maintain a strong momentum that has clearly been built in the past two financial years, FY 2024 and FY 2025, by continuing to focus on executing a clear and disciplined plan. The focus in the FY 2026 financial year will be to execute the following five key initiatives. Accelerate growth by leveraging high potential investment opportunities with existing boutique partners, and we are in discussions with three of the existing boutique partners at the moment, which is encouraging. We'll also assess new investment prospects to drive scalable growth of the business. Again, we are reviewing at least a couple of initiatives in that regard. There's a very active program around accelerating growth in the business.
As a second of the five key initiatives, focus continues on unlocking shareholder value. This will be effected by evaluating targeted capital structure initiatives to enhance returns and to continue to optimize the capital structure. The third of the five key initiatives will be to continue our focus on controlling operating costs. We will do this by maintaining disciplined cost management to support margin stability and capital efficiency. I think in the update of the half-year update I mentioned, we were something like a 40% reduction in operating costs. We now highlight or update that we're close to 60%. I don't expect those sort of gains going forward, but it shows the focus of management and the company on running the business as efficiently as possible. We will continue that focus on controlling operating costs. We will, as the fourth key initiative, look to continue to strengthen the balance sheet.
As Ashley mentioned earlier, we still have the U.S. debt facility. That is the only outstanding debt facility. The board will look at that facility in the second half of this calendar year. Potentially, we will prioritize debt reduction to improve financial flexibility and resilience. The final of the five focuses of management is to continue to enhance organizational efficiency. I mentioned this again in the update at the half-year. We have, and as Ashley Killick mentioned, it is updated. We've obviously outsourced the investment management function. We have converted that to an advisory agreement. We'll continue to work with our partners there by embedding and refining the structural and governance changes that we introduced through the last two financial years to improve both agility and decision-making.
In conclusion, we would like to thank our employees and the Pacific Current Group board, both past and present, for their work to enhance shareholder value. Though strong progress is being made again in the current financial year, FY 2025, there is still much to do, and we remain relentlessly focused on achieving the best possible outcome for our shareholders in this financial year, FY 2026, and beyond. We'd now like to open for any questions you may have.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask your question. The first question comes from the line of Nick McGarigal with Baronjoy. Please go ahead.
Hi, team. Thanks for taking questions. Can we just talk through those three opportunities to, I think you mentioned, take additional investments in some of the existing clients?
The additional investment in some of the existing boutiques?
Yeah.
Yeah. There's two. I won't mention particular boutiques because it's, you know, but I'll talk about what we're trying to do. I mean, it falls into two categories. Potentially support, you know, the growth of boutiques through effectively working capital loans. You know, clearly, we have, you know, a cash and short-term financial liability. We've got plenty of capacity to do that. We are looking at a couple of them to think about working capital loans. The other approach we're looking at is whether we would inject, you know, further capital into the operating businesses and support, potentially, the raising of new funds. I.e., some sort of seed type capability. They're the two directions we're looking at, and that's across three of the existing, you know, eight boutiques. Does that help?
Yeah, that's good. They're not necessarily additional equity investments. They're more funding or corporate or deflation or, you know, other, not a financial additional equity segment.
No, exactly. I mean, now we're not talking about increased equity stakes. It's basically effectively investing into the business. With the investment may come, you know, some restructuring of agreements. That's certainly possible in many dimensions. At this stage, it's not just a simple equity buy.
Okay. I think in the annual report, you actually mentioned you might pay back the debt. I think in the annual report, you guys said that you will pay back the debt in October with about a $1.2 million pre-payment penalty.
Yeah, exactly. The board is looking at that. That's a decision that will be taken by the board in September or October of this year. We are highlighting that the direction the company is traveling in is to continue to strengthen the balance sheet. Without prejudging what the board will decide, there's a high probability that we'll look hard at that debt facility and whether it's needed going forward. Obviously, the pre-payment penalty is a key consideration compared to future interest costs.
Okay. Any kind of intentions around the Abacus instruments? There's obviously shares and bonds. I think you have an escrow around those over a period of time. What's the intention to hold those long-term or to potentially liquidate those?
The bonds and the stock are quite separate. The bonds have an attractive coupon. Despite the negative developments that occurred back in early June around Abacus, where there was effectively a short selling activity directed out of the stock, which did affect the bonds, and it certainly affected the stock, the bonds are now trading back at close to par, $25 for bond face. There's no intention there short-term for any particular change in that. It's an attractive coupon with interest rates coming down globally, most likely. That's an attractive security. There's no thoughts there in the short term. The stock, we continue to monitor. Clearly, Abacus, the shares had hopefully close to $7 a share last night. Abacus reported their second quarter result a couple of weeks ago, which was encouraging. We continue to monitor the stock actively.
I'd emphasize that that sort of security, and Janet Henderson stock is the same. We're not long-term holders of listed stock investments. We will monitor that actively, constantly, and most likely move to sell those positions over the short to medium term. Again, decisions haven't been taken yet.
Yeah. Okay. That's helpful to understand. Maybe you could just take a step back and help us understand how the investment advisory committee thinks about capital allocation, expected returns, the remits, what's the ethos of Pacific Current Group now that you've got capital possibilities and an opportunity to obviously redeploy some of those investments into newer opportunities?
Sure. You probably noticed we have recently formed an investment advisory committee to support the board in its decision-making. It was previously an investment committee sub of the board. That was revised. The new structure, the investment advisory committee, has three voting members. We have an external Chair of that committee, Jim Craig. The new Chairman, Justin Arter, and myself are the other two voting members on the investment advisory committee. In terms of investments we're looking for, we are constantly looking for opportunities to transform the business going forward. In that regard, we've looked at a number of proposals and are looking at a number of proposals. Each will be judged on its merit in terms of basically delivering accretive growth to PAC . We've reviewed closely activity over the past few years and then thought about going forward.
We are more likely to probably make a smaller number of larger investments into the future than a whole raft of smaller investments in sort of startup or almost like venture capital style boutique startups. We're really not looking hard at that type of investment. We are looking hard at existing, operating businesses, probably more up in the private equity style space people would describe. Clearly, based on merit, return on our investment, accretive growth for PAC , those are the factors that drive our thinking and consideration. Importantly, as I think I stressed at the half-year result, the fact that we have a certain list of cash and short-dated liquid assets is not burning holes in anybody's pockets. We are patient investors who will only act where we see the opportunity. There are three very experienced people there on that investment advisory committee.
We also continue to be supported by Paul Greenwood and his team from GQG Partners, who provide advice directly to that committee as well. It's a very seasoned group of investors who will act very carefully with shareholder capital to continue to drive growth in the company.
I guess the next period of management, certainly with the BPGs ongoing, how do you think about that arrangement once the two-year period comes swimming?
Oh, that's a good question. I mean, we, you know, we'll obviously run through to the two years. We haven't contemplated beyond that period yet. The board will look at that over the next six months. I'm sorry, by the end of the year. We'll continue to evolve our thinking on that. There's no absolute plan yet.
All right. Thanks.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Clarke for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you all for joining the call this morning. We appreciate your support. It's been another busy year for PAC, following on the previous financial year. We feel we've made material progress with the company. The company is strongly positioned with its balance sheet, its potential to continue on its investment mission. We look forward to continuing to work hard and to serve shareholders into the future. Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.