for standing by, and welcome to the Praemium Limited First Half, 2024 Results presentation. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation, followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Anthony Wamsteker, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Welcome, everyone. Nice to have so many people interested in the half year results for us, and welcome to the presentation. At Praemium, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of country. We pay our respects to their elders, past, present, and emerging, for they hold the memories, traditions, and culture of First Nations people. I draw everyone on the call's attention to our disclaimer, which is on slide three. Okay. So joining me on the call today is my colleague, David Coulter, the CFO, and today we'll be running through, very briefly, the first half highlights, followed by the financial results, and then I will spend a little bit of time talking about the acquisition that was also announced this morning of the Iress OneVue Platform business, and then we'll open it up for any questions.
If I, first of all, go to the highlights of the year, of the half year. So, we had the AUD 9 million EBITDA at the Annual General Meeting. We signaled that that was probably about where we were likely to land. The revenue of AUD 39.7 million is 10% on the previous calendar period. I have to say, even though we aspire to double-digit revenue growth, the 39.7 was somewhat disappointing to us, and again, we mentioned that in the Annual General Meeting update. FUA continues to grow strongly, and we're pleased to be on the threshold of reaching AUD 50 billion and that's that will be a big milestone for the Praemium business. And for the first half of the year, we continue to return capital to shareholders.
In this half, it was all in the form of a buyback, and we'll continue where we don't have appropriate uses of the capital to look for ways to return that capital to shareholders. I think, one other thing, that I'll just draw, which is not really in the first half, but, the fact that we do have a strong balance sheet, was what allowed us to participate in the OneVue acquisition, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later in the presentation. Just going to the net flows, the reason we put this slide in, is that we want people to get a view of the longer term trajectory of the funds under administration.
The double digit revenue growth that we aspire to comes largely, because we're able to grow FUA, and so, it's important for FUA to be growing, and it's important that that growth comes through what we control, the organic side of things. But usually, we have some help from the tailwind of a, of a positive market return, and so this slide, I won't go into it in any great detail, but it highlights that FUA does grow consistently over time, and is what underpins our aspiration for double digit revenue growth. For the first half of 2024, the half just completed, the net inflow for the Praemium Managed Accounts scheme continued to be very strong, and pleasing, and in line with the aspiration of double digit growth.
The Powerwrap scheme had a unusual half, in that there was actual net outflow, but we feel that's likely to ameliorate over time. Again, we talked about that at the AGM, and I draw people's attention back to the comments we made then as well. But longer term, we think that the Powerwrap scheme will grow strongly. Both schemes benefit not just from writing new business, but from the reality that we've got some very good clients who use our platform, and those clients have typically grown their business at above market rates. So, and we think that will continue to be the case, and that the last half was just a bit of anomaly in that regard for the Powerwrap scheme.
This half, we introduce a new slide, which is to talk about the non-custody FUA. That's a very important part of our business. Many of you have heard me say before that part of the appeal that we can offer to clients is that we can deal with both custody and non-custody. You know, non-custody is a very important segment in the high net worth part of the market, and will continue to be, and the only way an advisor can give a full portfolio view or whole of wealth view to their clients is to be across the non-custody component of their clients' portfolios. And so our non-custody solution is a very important part of giving advisors a whole of wealth view that they can share with their clients.
We're very excited about the growth that we're seeing in the non-custody part of our business, and very confident about the outlook for that. We are the largest non-custody provider in the market, but the biggest part of the market, even though we're the biggest, particularly in the admin space, with AUD 25 billion in non-custody FUA, and that's well and truly in front of the second biggest non-custody provider. But the biggest segment is actually people who are doing it in their own back office, advisors who are doing their own back office. So there's a massive opportunity being number one in the market, as that market shifts to professional providers rather than doing it in their own back office, and we're seeing great opportunity for us, for us in there.
If I just highlight the Investment Trends platform results are just out, and again, we maintain number three position overall. I'm not sure we'd ever be number one. Sometimes we get asked: "Will you ever be number one?" It's possible, I'm not saying we won't, but the reality is, it's a platform survey for the whole market. And given that, the largest part of the market is retail, and we specialize in high net worth, we continue to build the functionality for the high net worth segment, and the reality is, that means in some categories, we might struggle to get the points necessary to come number one, but we're very happy to have won those two categories, which we think are the most important categories for the high net worth segment.
And so we'll continue to respond to our client needs, rather than trying to build the platform to win number one. But nevertheless, the fact that we are doing that should mean that we expect to continue to do very well, and it's good to have the endorsement for another year, that we are continuing to do extremely well, particularly in the categories that we look to provide a good outcome for high net worth advisors. So as I say, just, that's just a brief touching on the highlights. I'll be back later in the call to talk a bit more about the way we're seeing the market looking forward in the OneVue acquisition.
The most important, in my view, part of this is to hand over to David and let him take you through the financial results for the first half in more detail. Over to you, David.
Thanks very much, Anthony. I'll take you through the financial results. I should be on slide 11 now, as you're seeing it on your screens, and it's the group results. I think Anthony touched on the revenue and cost dynamics in the highlights to the results, and you see them in a little more detail here. Just for a bit of financial housekeeping, I'd point out that there's a very detailed reconciliation in the actual statutory accounts of our underlying EBITDA to our statutory net profit after tax. We also have slides to follow this one, that have a little more detail on the derivation of both the revenue and the costs. I think we highlighted at the AGM, that the revenue had grown quite significantly, and many, many companies in many different industries would be very happy with a 10% uplift in revenue.
However, we participate in a strong growth sector, and we do mark ourselves very harshly on these attributes of our business. In particular, in the platform space, we were the beneficiaries, traditionally, of high volumes of trading activity, and that ameliorated or softened very significantly in the first half of the 2024 financial year. There's some slides that follow on the underlying margins that bear that out. On the cost base, we had held off, to the greatest degree possible, the headwinds of wage cost inflation. You see there that our wage inflation underlying was around 7%, and that's a measure of wage increases granted for roles that existed within the business.
More than that, wherever someone had departed the business, and we replaced them with a different employee, that wage growth was more pronounced again, just to get back into the market and get the right candidate for the role to join the organization. We feel now that we've struck the right balance between rewarding our staff, making sure that we're at market. We've conducted a very comprehensive benchmarking exercise of every one of our roles to a very reputable source of information for wages within the financial services sector, and we've got that balance right now, but it has come at the cost of wage inflation more broadly. You can see that in the footnote to the P&L there, where we have wage growth of around AUD 3.1 million, and that's all on-cost salaries as well.
You might be aware that payroll tax, of course, in our home state of Victoria, was increased, and that's been part of what's also hit us there. As I said, there's more detail on the following slides. I'm happy to answer any questions on what reconciles our statutory results to underlying. Just moving us on now to the margin slide. You can see here that the platform revenue margins did come off a little, particularly in the Powerwrap business. You look at 20 basis points in the prior comparative period, down to 19 basis points. While we express all the revenue as a function of the FUA, not necessarily every dollar of revenue we earn is directly correlated to the FUA we have on platform, and trading revenue is probably the most stark example of that.
You're really looking at 5% decrement in the Powerwrap business on what it was able to earn from the FUA underlying, as well as having reasonably subdued FUA, as Anthony pointed out in his section, based on the movement of particular advisors within different licensee groups, in particular, to a licensee that doesn't utilize our technology in the Powerwrap space. But it also came off somewhat in the SMA, although less pronounced there, with something of an increase half on half. The SMA margins, whilst they're healthier, the FUA and the SMA is lower than the Powerwrap revenue, and that's to a reasonably large degree, while we've seen reasonably strong revenue growth, but as I say, a little disappointing for a participant in our sector that is a, is a challenger platform and expects to grow at reasonable double digits.
Now moving to our FTE, which is the most significant contributor to our costs. We see here that the FTE increases were most pronounced in Australia, which has been a very high wage location, relative to, say, the Armenian staff contingent. And the increases in Australia have been borne largely by the need to bolster our risk and infrastructure resilience overall, as well as a simplistic measure of having to award reasonably high wage increases just to keep up with markets, and also to temper the turnover that we were suffering in there. The wage increases, I think, are deplorable, and we would not necessarily want to have them repeated in the next half of this year. In other words, we think we've achieved what we want to achieve to make sure that we've built a resilient, strong, capable business.
However, it's come at some cost because wages have grown very strongly in Australia over the last two years. I'm on now to slide 14 in our cash flow. You can see here, the operating cash flow is not necessarily as reflective as we'd like of the underlying result, and that's because we'd had a timing mismatch on our GST collections and remittances that occurs, as it will occasionally, over reporting periods. The one-off costs have been dampened somewhat. The one-off costs that we've incurred here are largely in relation to the initiatives we're taking to make sure that in the face of these cost increases, we are building a significant mark-to-market set of revenue initiatives across our product set. In other words, we have done a lot of preparatory work to ensure that, or to understand better, I think, would be the better phrasing.
Understand better where it is that our products compete vigorously, but that we're materially underpriced relative to our main competitors in that part of the market. And that having not really increased any of our prices for the best part of a decade, a high inflation environment presents the opportunity to make sure that you're marked adequately to market for the service you provide. We've done a lot of preparatory work to make sure that our teams are well-informed and able to speak to clients about what it is that's governing or providing the impetus to the decisions to lift our revenue rating for our products as they stand, and that's come at that cost. The financing cash flow is largely made up from the share buyback, Anthony referred to that as well, where we're not necessarily a high volume listed entity.
We tend to trade in our own shares when the opportunity presents itself, in terms of liquidity and reasonably stable price. But at AUD 7.5 million and 6.6 million in the prior comparative period, we're coming fairly close now to having exhausted the AUD 25 million that we were prepared to outlay from the divestment proceeds of the international business. And as you'd have seen from today's announcement, and Anthony will go into detail, we now have in front of us an acquisition opportunity which might, or not might, I should say, definitively provides a better deployment of capital in our view, as it will help enhance, grow our business, and also ensure that we're building the sort of scale that is necessary to compete vigorously in this sector. And from our last... I'll just turn you to the balance sheet now.
Again, really, the only message from this is that we've got a very strong, very clean balance sheet, and it's clearly able to fund not only the buybacks that we've engaged to date, but the initiative that we're going to announce, or that Anthony is going, or that we have announced, sorry, and that Anthony will go into detail on, as part of the Iress OneVue platform business acquisition. I'll just touch very quickly on the group regulatory cash requirement. I'm well aware that we had thought we would be down to only having to maintain AUD 10 million in cash, for the AFSLs that we hold. It remains AUD 15 million at this stage, because we did have some interactions on what it was required to submit to the regulator.
There's no significant hiccup or problem with doing that, and we'd expect to get that initiative underway again and engineered for the remainder of the financial year. The OneVue business itself does have its own AUD 5 million AFSL requirement, so there'll be temporarily a AUD 20 million allocation for those licenses. But you can see from the amount of cash we hold here, and if you project forward to what might be outlaid for the OneVue acquisition, we'll have excess liquidity over that AUD 20 million for that very brief period of time anyway. So I'll hand you over to Anthony now to discuss the strategy and the OneVue acquisition. Thank you.
Thanks, David. All right, so if we go to the strategy. Now, I've talked in the past about the strategic approach that we adopt, and we've slightly done it differently this time, but I just wanna go through it. Just, I know it's repetitious, but I, I just think that, you know, you need to understand that our strategy is consistent... year on year, half on half, so that you can understand a little bit about what I'll say about what we're doing, and also where the OneVue acquisition fits in. But we've always said we monitor the market. You know, that's, that's part of our job, is to just know what's happening in the market. Then, in response to what's happening in the market, we need to develop and offer products and services that, that effectively address the evolving needs.
So that's a combination of seeing what's happening in the market, and also being aware of what's happening in technology and other areas that might help us to offer products and services that keep meeting those needs, and in fact, go beyond the current needs to future needs. And from that, with that, we then are able to create some things that are unique, some things that are differentiators. The things that are unique, they are things that only we provide. The differentiators are things that allow us to provide things that are done by others, but hopefully in a way that is better suited to the needs of our client base. The ultimate outcome is that we will deliver improvements that outshine existing alternatives.
And then the final leg, and I haven't talked about this so much as a strategy in the past. I've sometimes talked about the first three legs to our strategy development, but the other thing I think is important, and we've reiterated in our thinking about the strategy, is it's very important that we continue to grow and scale our business. We do think that we're smaller than we need to be to ultimately deliver the first three parts of our strategy. So then, what does that look like? The first part of it is to understand the market, and the first thing we say about the market is there continues to be a differentiation between the high net worth client and the average retail client, but that there is some converging needs.
And the overlap in that Venn diagram talks about some of the overlapping needs. More and more people want the total wealth view. More and more they want super and non-super managed with the one advisor, custody and non-custody, and managed portfolios and individual assets. So those things are overlaps, and they're things that will continue to drive our development. Having said, you know, one quick way of looking at the market, and there's other ways, but that's a quick summary of how we're viewing the market. We then say, "Well, what do we need to do to respond?" So to deliver the second and third aspects or pillars of our strategy, and this is again repetition, but these were the five strategic initiatives or fields of endeavor that we would pursue.
And on each of those, we've made good progress. So the Next Gen IDPS product launch is in its final stages. That's a very key component of what we need to offer to fully meet the needs of the market. And so, the IDPS is a very important development. We are in the final stages, where we're doing the work on how we're gonna present that to the market. I know I do get some questions sometimes about exactly how is the IDPS different from other parts of our offering, and part of that will be answered when we launch. It will be very clear from the launch materials how that is a genuine next generation product for the platform market. The Mercer onboarding we've called out there is important addition to our non-custodial.
Operational transformation, I've talked a little bit about that in the past, you know, you've got to get your operations right to be able to deliver, and a big part of what we've been doing over the last six months is getting ready for the revenue uplift, which David talked about, and which is very much on track compared to what we said at the AGM. The group-wide service enhancements, we are a service business, we always have to be improving our client service, so we've made a couple of enhancements there, but it continues to be a major focus for what we do. Superannuation, it's still even in the high-net-worth segment, superannuation is at least half the total money that is managed and administered on behalf of clients.
So we're absolutely determined to have best of breed superannuation offering, and there's a little bit of a descriptor there about what we're doing, and there's more stuff happening in the background. And finally, we are on the lookout for acquisition opportunities. We continue to be, OneVue won't be the last acquisition that we make, but, you know, being able to announce that today is very pleasing. I'll talk about that acquisition now, and it is highly accretive strategic. It's, as you all know, there's not many businesses that are right down the middle of the fairway, as we say, in terms of exactly the same as what we do now.
It adds AUD 4 billion or thereabouts in FUA to our platform offering, and we expect to realize at least AUD 3 million of pre-tax synergies once we migrate it onto the Praemium technology. But the reality is we can manage that whole business on our own tech stack, and that was what made that so attractive to us, and that will be the work of implementation now. The acquisition price we're, you know, we're comfortable with what we've agreed to pay for that business, but there is an earn-out that makes us committed to not only getting the AUD 4 billion on, but, you know, we feel that there's opportunities for that, for just the client base that OneVue has already to grow to AUD 6 billion over the coming-...
18 months, so there is a possibility the full earn-out will be AUD 20 million. And we would love that. That would be a great earn-out from our point of view, if we've grown that business to AUD 6 billion, and certainly that our determination is to do that. And our track record is that the Powerwrap business, it's grown by well over 50% since acquiring that business. So we know that we can, we can grow businesses after we acquire them.
And then the client migration and timing, so the target is to complete this transaction by the end of April, and then start to work on migrating it to our platform, but also continue the work of talking to the clients where we feel there's a big opportunity to grow that business, and as I say, get that FUA growing even further. Just as part of the work we did on the Iress OneVue business, we've put up some slides there to just talk about the AUD 4 billion and what it is made up of. And in that slide, you'll see we've talked a little bit about some of the products, some of the segments, and what the FUA is made up of.
You will note that there is some non-custody business there, which we think makes Praemium a good home for it, because again, as you all know, that's a big part of what we offer. The other thing, just in the client segment that we're delighted about, is there's some very important family office clients in that portfolio, and that it is totally consistent with our high net worth view, and part of the business that we'll be looking to grow further. So, that just gives you a good summary, AUD 10.9 million of revenue in calendar 2023. Very nice addition of revenue to our business, as well as the FUA, and, as I say, great prospects for that business in the Praemium world. Post-migration, this just says, what do the two businesses look together?
I mentioned earlier that AUD 50 billion in platform FUA would be a great milestone, or sorry, not in platform, in total FUA would be a great milestone, and if we don't reach it by the time this transaction completes, then this transaction will take us above AUD 50 billion. So, big milestone, and obviously big incentive to say, "Well, AUD 100 billion would be a nice target going forward." And when you're looking for double-digit revenue growth, that should be an aspiration that we should be proud to go for.
Let me close by saying, we're delighted to be able to acquire that business because, you know, it's got some tremendous people working in it, where we've had a really good time getting to know all the people, and really look forward to welcoming them into the Praemium business. Even though it's an acquisition, in many ways, we'll treat it as like a merger, where we'll be trying to pick the best of breed in what OneVue people do and what Praemium people do. And certainly, the migration of Powerwrap onto the Praemium platforms, that has enabled us to get some good ideas that help both businesses, so we'll be doing the same with OneVue.
I am gonna open to questions, but there is an appendix there, which is a very busy slide, but that, slide 26 in the pack that we released to the market, just allows you to see, some highlights of that business, and, information that came to us as part of the work we did to satisfy ourselves that it would be a good acquisition. So thank you very much for your attention so far, and now we do have, people on the line who are able to ask questions, so I'm gonna pause and open it up for any questions. Thank you.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your phone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star then two. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from Lafitani Sotiriou from MST. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. My first question, I would like to expand on the OneVue platform acquisition. Could you please just add a little bit more color, if we want to try and think about the next sort of 18 months, two years, in terms of the costs falling away for both the TSA and you achieving your synergies? So just a bit more clarity on the timing of that. And then also, if you could talk to the actual practicalities. So, will the OneVue platform technology still be around, or are you expecting to do a complete transfer to your own existing infrastructure? If you could just add some color around that, that would be great.
Great. Thanks, Laf, and welcome to the call, and I'll take the second question and then hand over to David on the timing. I—before I do hand over to David, I will highlight, as you all know, he for many years was CFO at IOOF, as it was, now Insignia, and oversaw as CFO quite a number of transactions, and I can assure you, having worked with him close up, he is gonna be very focused on making sure we stay disciplined on realizing those cost savings. So I'll hand over to him in a minute. But just on the tech stack and the business, Laf, which is a very good question, I do wanna make a couple of points.
The first one is, it will be on Praemium tech, and so there will only be one tech stack in the, in the Praemium world going forward. Part of the uplift that we've been focused on in the recent past, one of, one of them has been, bringing Richard Large in as CTO, and asking him to give us you know, whatever we need to do to build out the tech team. And, Richard also, like David, has had many years of experience, in his case, with Aberdeen Asset Management, doing a number of transactions and ruthlessly getting them down to the bare minimum number of platforms. So it will be just one tech stack, it will be the Praemium tech stack.
Having said that, OneVue have done strategically what I say we need to do, which is you've got to monitor the market, and then you've got to find what you're good at, and make sure what you're good at delivers for the market. So there is a couple of modules in the OneVue platform that we will either need to build out or will need to seamlessly integrate to our tech stack. There's not many, but there's just a little bit of capability there that will be very important to the OneVue clients to say we haven't gone backwards in terms of what we're getting from the new tech stack.
So it will be very disciplined approach over the next 18 months, and we're confident that what that means is that there will be a functionality uplift to not just, you know, not just doing that for the OneVue clients, but to Praemium clients as well, as a result of having to add a module or two to the Praemium tech stack. But I'll let David talk about the timing and the costs associated with the various milestones along the way.
Yeah, thanks, Anthony, and thanks for your question, Laf. In essence, we've disclosed that we'd have AUD 4 million of one-off costs, and that, again, in very simplistic terms, is what it will cost us to interact with Iress on a TSA, to operate the business on its current tech, while we're preparing our own stack to take receipt of client funds. AUD 4 million over 18 months, works out at AUD 2.7 million on an annualized basis. Like any CFO, I'd be exhorting our team to transition off TSA as quickly as possible. The natural tension will be, how much risk are we taking in doing that? And which clients are willing, in what order, to embrace our new tech stack?
I would figure that that would be the ones who have the least amount of bespoke customization in their OneVue offering, and that would be looking for Praemium as a logical solution, based on our reputation and our rating in the market more broadly. The TSA itself is modular, and the bulk of it is focused on the provision of IT capability and capacity. Those head office corporate services, and I think given my own exposure, I'd talk about the finance team, for example. We are not keen on, and nor is Iress, just quietly, we're not keen on having a finance function out of Iress head office extend itself for 12 or 18 months, for that matter.
We think we should be able to get ourselves away from that, as they'd be keen to do as well, just based on us working collaboratively to make sure that we've got all the information we need, all the feeds, and we've built our GL appropriately to take receipt of the company information. That's the sort of dynamic we're going to try and impose on each of the teams within Praemium, to ensure that we're just taking advantage of that modular nature of the TSA.
Okay. Can I just follow up to the capability gap? Can you just a follow-up question, and then I've got a new question. So can you just go into a little bit more detail, what are some of the capability gaps that you'll be looking to fill or transfer across from OneVue? And then can I just go into some of the price changes? The language here is a little bit stronger around looking to capitalize on, on, well, possibly push through some price increases. So over the last year and a bit, you've made some changes on the cash margin, but are you talking outside of the cash margin, you're actually looking to possibly increase administration fees and the like, and what is the time horizon on some of these price changes?
So, Laf, once again, I'll go to your second question first, and the answer to that is yes. I know it wasn't really a yes, no question, but the answer is yes, we're looking beyond just the cash margin, also looking at the cash margin as well. So, you know, you might have a follow-up question if you want more detail about that, but yeah, we're looking at every part of the platform. And then if I go back to the first question, which was a follow-up, and this gets to... It's related, you can relate it to the question you've just asked about the revenue.
Obviously, as you know, you know better than most, that a platform has many components of revenue, and that each component of revenue arises from some functionality that you're offering to a client. The three big ones we often talk about are just: what's the base platform fee? What's the cash margin? And what's the trading revenue or execution margin that you take? But there are numerous others, and the reason I mention it in both the revenue, but the revenue arise because you're offering a service, and in each of those areas, OneVue are offering something slightly different to what Praemium does, and their technology delivers things in a slightly different way.
Most of those differences are very slight, and so we can administer and service the OneVue client base on the Praemium technology, but there are elements of the total that they do slightly differently. They do trading and execution slightly differently to how we do in Praemium, in some ways superior, in some ways the Praemium way is probably superior. And so what we wanna do is, the way that OneVue are serving their clients on trading and execution is different to the way Praemium does it, and you can see from the client's point of view, probably considered to be superior to the Praemium way.
We need to take the trading and execution functionality that they've built, and the modules they've built into their platform, and put them into the Praemium, or else say we can build that module out in the Praemium world, or we can acquire that module. You know, we're no longer, Praemium is no longer a shop where we have to build everything ourselves, so there are a couple of things where we might go to market and buy a module that will meet the needs of the OneVue clients, and be a superior solution for the Praemium client base.
Okay, got it. So it's more, process rather than actual, product feature, that is, there's a gap, so don't currently offer. You're saying-
Mm-hmm
... it's more process driven, that you, you'll need to sort of work that out, over the coming year and a half on how to solve some of those, so some of those processing out?
Yeah, that's right, Laf, and the OneVue people have told us, you know, that when they look at their product development, most of it lands on the sort of functionality that's offered either in the Praemium platform world or the Powerwrap product. The big gap for both of us is this IDPS that we're building out, and so that will be just being able to get that live as well, will close a lot of the gap, too. But as I say, more on the trading and execution, there are some things they do, which is very clever, and they need to be commended on what they've done there for their clients.
It's, I mean, interesting, the IDPS, that's my last area of questioning. So can you just add a... This is a big change, right?
Mm-hmm.
So this is a reasonable growth area of the overall platform space. Have you got an existing back book of clients or existing book of clients that have been demanding this? So do you expect to start at a reasonable run rate? And can you just, I'm sorry if I missed this, but can you just add a bit more color around the timing of the launch of when this will be in the market?
Yeah. So, in terms of a back book, to be honest, where we've lost opportunities that we're pitching for because we don't have an IDPS, we haven't yet had a lot. We've had one or two who say, "You need to come back to us when you've got the IDPS, then you'd have a better chance of winning." But most, when they go to market with a tender, are ready to go now. So, it's not as if we've got a whole lot of new clients who have said, "We'll wait till you've got the IDPS before we make our own platform decision." We have got one or two who that is feasible, but not many.
We've certainly got a lot of our existing clients who say, basically, "You've stretched either Powerwrap or more, more commonly, the managed account scheme to the limit in terms of what functionality you can build on that, but I still need a new IDPS. I need a full IDPS solution." So there is a big demand for it, mostly, though, in our own client base. So we would think that the first 3-6 months after launch could well be migration of existing clients who actually need that functionality, rather than what Powerwrap offers or what the managed account scheme offers.
I'm sure we'll get a lot of traction very early on after that, because we know that there's a number of tenders where we would've done better in the tender had we have had the full IDPS. And when I said before, you know, you'll hear more from us as we go to market, there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes at the moment, on how we position that in the market. You know, I've said before, you know, whatever year, whatever happens, I can assure you this won't come to the market branded Next Gen IDPS. That won't be the brand. So a lot of work's going on, on the brand, the naming, and the material that should go into a proper launch.
That should give us plenty of momentum to not only, you know, win over the existing client base who might wanna migrate from one product to this, but more importantly, far more importantly, and the business case is predicated on actually winning more new clients onto it.
The timing, are we saying within six months, within 12 months, just to-
Oh, definitely within six months. Yeah, yeah.
Got it. Thank you.
Probably later this year, later this financial year, or early next financial year is the current timing.
Okay. We probably should move on to some of the other callers, Laf, but happy to have you round back in, if you'd like.
Thanks, Laf.
Thank you. The next question comes from Nicholas McGarrigle, from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Good day. I was wanting to get a sense on what gives you confidence that you can get to the kind of AUD 6 billion upper end of that range. I guess they had about AUD 5.7 billion when the business was acquired by Iress, so some of the money obviously has leaked out. But what gives you confidence that you can regrow that towards AUD 6 billion?
So thanks, Nick. It's essentially existing clients of the OneVue platform, who have... There is some conversation going, some of this is confidential, but the gist of it is, existing clients on the OneVue platform, where conversations are occurring, as to moving more of their book onto the platform. And obviously, as part of our work that we did in the due diligence phase, we've satisfied ourselves that they are indeed wonderful opportunities, and we're very keen for those to land.
If I just may add, the CFO perspective is, we think the earn-out is pitched at the right level. In other words, it's 4 now, and that would result another close to AUD 7 million paid out. 4- so AUD 8 million in total for 4 billion of FUA. The business would have excellent operating leverage, should we win the additional 2 billion. So the payment of another 12, 12 million dollars would not be of concern. It would be worth doing for the additional revenue we'd garner from the additional FUA.
Yeah, and I guess the kind of 2x revenue, is that right, roughly, on the-
Yeah.
If you got an extra AUD 1 billion, that 30-bips ish? Yeah.
Yeah, but look, and we think that would be only reasonable. So I think it's been a really tough negotiation with Iress, that's fair to say, as it ought to be. But I think that the two parties would come together on the fact that the sliding scale for the earn-out is proportionally where it should be for what the business looks like now and what it could look like in nine and 18 months.
Yep.
Can I just say, it's—we think under almost all scenarios, the revenue multiple is well under 2. So like if the pool doesn't grow, then the multiple will be under 1. But you know, we're very hopeful, and we'll be working hard to pay the full earn-out. And if we do, it'll only be a bit above 1 revenue multiple.
True.
Yep, and can I just get a sense? I mean, Iress gave some disclosures in their last presentation around their managed portfolio. I mean, they obviously don't talk about this division explicitly, but it looks like it was probably losing a little bit of money to them at the EBITDA line. Can you just talk through pro forma post-migration pre-synergies? Is the business expected to be profitable to you?
So, it can't be... Well, we don't expect it to be profitable on day one. In fact, we expect it to lose money. We believe it was about, you know, break even, and it's really for Iress to say. But in the Iress world, we understand the business was about break even. When we take it over, it will be loss-making, because we need additional services out of the Iress world that are covered under the shared Transitional Services Agreement, the TSA. So, that will take it from break even to loss-making when it comes into our world.
But then there's benefits if we can grow the scale independent of the migration, but the big benefit comes if we can migrate it, well, not if, when we migrate it onto the Praemium technology stack.
Is it kind of bilateral negotiations with each of the individual clients to say, "Listen, we're retiring the OneVue systems, you can move on to the SMA, or you can kind of move your business elsewhere?" Is it that kind of conversation? Or just trying to understand-
Yeah
... you know, the pace of the migration and the risk around the revenue retention.
Yeah, no, it's the former, Nick. It is one-on-one negotiations with each of the clients, and talking about what, you know, what product and services they've got from Iress, and what those products and services look like in the Praemium world. But just to be clear, it's a tech migration, not a product migration. If people say, "Oh, I wanna, I wanna move from the Iress product to the equivalent Praemium product," that's fine, but they won't be forced to do that. What we will be doing is serving those products and services that OneVue currently offers by using the Praemium technology to do it, rather than the OneVue technology to do it.
Cool. I'm just trying to understand, so if I—maybe I'm not understanding correctly, but 4... let's say AUD 4 billion at 30 bps is AUD 12 million. It's gonna lose money for you, and then you get AUD 3 million of synergies. I'm just trying to understand how you guys make it mid-teens accretive on the-
So-
How does it stack up?
Yep. So the running costs, as they will be borne by us while we're under the TSA, will fall away, and the underlying business will be AUD 3 million, at least, better off on its own EBITDA. So it's an uplift from that break even. We're not considering the movement from loss making under TSA up to synergies realization as part of the synergies. We wanted to be clear that synergies were what we'd be saving from the standalone running cost of that business, and we're treating the TSA costs as the one-off. So they're the ones we're running-
The TSA embedded in that AUD 1.5 million cost-
Yeah
-that you called out, the couple of 1.5, the one-offs?
No, no, the TSA is the AUD 4 million over 18 months, in essence.
Okay. Yep, and then just to-
The 1.5, just to be clear on those, Nick, 1.5, even on a deal of this size, as far as purchase price goes, that's about right for the sort of advisory, legal, taxation, due diligence services that we'd have to call in for a business of our scale. And then there would be some sort of reorganizational restructuring costs at the back end, once the business is lifted from the OneVue technology to our own. So they're in those three distinct buckets.
Yep. Okay, that's good to understand. And maybe just a last question, I guess, on the underlying business, the result was kind of as you guided. I think there was a view that you get earnings back to maybe the levels we were thinking previously on the back of some revenue and some cost synergies. Can you give us an update on those? I guess you've alluded to some potential pricing changes on the revenue side, which are, are, you know, fairly controllable. Just wanted to get an update on that, on the underlying business as well.
Yeah, I'll go for that one. Anthony answered that question in fairly significant, extensive detail with Laf, but there will be information in the public domain fairly shortly on what we're doing with the structure of certain of our products and the revenue that we'll generate from that. So until that's there, we can't go into any specifics. But that gives you the sense that we're well underway with planning and indeed delivery for execution on some of those repricing initiatives. As far as cost synergies going, I would not necessarily expect, while we've got an acquisition on and launch of the IDPS, that we're looking to liberate from the underlying business any costs. It is a growing business, and we'd expect those costs to increase. What I would say is that the rate of increase of 19% as it was, to PCP, should ameliorate significantly.
Yeah, we've awarded our wage increases, we've recomposed our workforce, we should be able to constrain our cost growth to something the equivalent of wage inflation with a stable workforce and supplier cost inflation more broadly.
Yeah. Okay, and then I guess the synergy that you flagged is kind of on the December 2023 profit run rate of the core business, and the OneVue acquisition with no TSAs and all the synergies.
Yeah, and look, we'll be very, very transparent come August in how we're reporting those businesses. We won't try and mix and match. There'll be a very distinct disclosure of OneVue under our stewardship or ownership, and what it has contributed or not to our business overall, and it will be granular to the extent that our current business is as well. You know, we'll, we'll have it reporting the way we report our own business, but distinctly differently, so that everyone in, in your part of the, the industry can get a good line on whether or not we're doing what we said we'd do. And-
Mm.
- moreover-
Yeah.
You know, we're not trying to then mask any deficiencies, if you wanna call it that, in our underlying business. We're being very, very transparent in how our underlying existing Praemium Powerwrap businesses and non-custody businesses are going.
Yeah, and maybe just one last one for me. Your interest income, I think, annualized to a rate of close to 6%, so I just wanna find out who your online savings account is with, 'cause I might move my money. And then D&A was significantly lower than last year, so I just wanted to get some-
Uh-
Comments on those two questions.
Oh, no, happy to, happy to spook our banker, because it's OneVue's banker as well, so we get a nice little synergy in that respect. That's Westpac.
Okay, and then just the D&A was down a fair bit. Just wanna understand why that was so much lower.
Oh, nothing in particular. I think the rate of addition to capitalized intangibles two years ago, because we were facing an uphill battle on some of the regulatory, was down a little. It's probably just that coming through.
All right. Thanks for taking this question.
Oh, no, I, I can actually tell you, the other component would be significantly reducing our property footprint as well. Most of the leasing expense actually goes through D&A now, just to be aware.
Mm-hmm.
Thank you. The next question comes from Nick Burgess from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much. Morning, gents. David, a few questions for you. Just on OneVue, the mid-teens accretion within 18 months, what level of forward retention, or level are you assuming in that accretion guidance?
Everything fits pretty conservatively. It's to retain the AUD 4 billion.
Okay, at AUD 4 billion. Secondly, just on the AUD 3 million synergies, are they just cost synergies, or given that the SMA revenue margin's a bit higher than what OneVue looks like, are you assuming some revenue synergies as well?
No, they're cost synergies as far as models. I- if there were revenue synergies, I, I see where you're taking that, but we are assuming, as far as modeling goes, that all existing clients stay with a OneVue-type product, but tech. And as Anthony said earlier, if they wanna migrate to one of our products, more than happy to entertain that conversation, but that's not the way we've done the modeling.
Okay, so the same tech rather than the... So the same, yeah, same product rather than-
Certainly, we've that same mantra. It's a tech migration, not a product migration, is the best way to describe it.
Yeah. Okay, so no, anticipated major changes in revenue margin for the OneVue business on that basis?
Certainly not modeled that way.
Just thinking about the business overall, lastly, in terms of EBITDA margin before we think about OneVue, obviously, the EBITDA margin for Praemium's been pretty volatile for reasons we've talked about in depth, but the outlook for the EBITDA margin over the next couple of halves, obviously, the market has been helpful. You've still got ongoing cost management issues. Any outlook comments on the EBITDA margin for the group?
But we still aspire to get ourselves to the 40% that was called out ever since Anthony and I started doing roadshow together, and admit that that has not been our achievement to date, because it's borne out in the numbers. But aspirationally, we would be targeting 40%, and we have often said, trying to give ourselves some sort of pass on this, that it's our scale that upsets it more than anything else, because it doesn't take terribly much to go wrong in either line of the P&L, to put us back a little on that aspiration. The OneVue acquisition in and of itself is what's going to accelerate our aspiration to get to that sort of dynamic.
Okay. And lastly, actually, also, flows across both businesses have been pretty volatile over the last few quarters. Any outlook comments or trading updates in terms of flows onto the platform would be helpful?
Well, obviously, Nick, we'll be giving the March quarter flows in mid-April, and so that's when you'll know a bit more. But what we tried to do at the AGM is just be clear on, you know, the impact that advisor movements was having, particularly for our biggest client in the Powerwrap world. And, you know-
... The trend other than advisor movements is, you know, whilst it's still cyclical, it's been better, you know, of recent times than it was at a slow point, and so that's all I'd say about that. And the advisor movements, we had, you know, a disappointing half, where, you know, we've been able to rely, as I said earlier, on our clients. Our advice firms typically have won the battle for advisors and have grown their market share. As one of them said to me, "Any time we grow our advisor numbers, that's a big win, because the number of advisors is contracting." So if we grow the number of advisors in our business, in a market where the number of advisors overall is contracting, we've done well, and most of our advice firms have done that.
Like, you know, we've been the big beneficiary, and we think we will be longer term. There's been no change to the fact that we've got a very good client base, who is typically... They've typically grown their advisor pool, and, you know, we have said that some of our advice firms are doing well in this environment, this landscape, where advisors are moving at the moment.
Okay, thanks very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Tom Tweedie from Moelis Australia. Please go ahead.
Hi, Anthony and David. Thanks for taking my questions. Just building on a couple of the previous questions asked, with the OneVue acquisition, are you able to give us a sense of the sort of compositions of the revenue margins and fees there, how they compare to your existing businesses? I'm assuming closer to Powerwrap.
Yeah, well, if, if you look at the, what we've disclosed, the, the revenue's of the order of AUD 10 billion... 10 million, sorry, not- it would be nice if it was AUD 10 billion. AUD 10 million, and, and, FUA was about AUD 4 billion. So a quick summary is, the average is around 25 basis points, so it sits between Powerwrap and, and, the managed account scheme, which we've published in the results, and, and it's pretty close to the average. So it's a similar business in that regard. The, the pricing's similar to what we do. So yeah, similar business in a, in a, a lot of ways to the, the-
And that includes admin fees and cash fees are sort of comparable?
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Okay, thanks for that. The second question, just further to what Laf was mentioning, just to help our thinking on the timing of the migration costs, is the bulk of that probably going to be... It's obviously FY25, but in terms of the two halves, how should we think about that?
Look, it's scheduled for 18 months. We will be doing everything we can within our power to make it quicker, but I think it's judicious to go with a conservative view that's married up with the earn-out and the capacity to continue to avail ourselves of Iress service provision. Given that, and given we're now into the second half of the year, albeit just, and the completion isn't till really the last quarter, you'd say you'd be very hopeful of having a fully implemented business running for the 2026 financial year, and that'll give you your best run at a clean, OneVue business on our tech, every client migrated, and in the product set that they wanna be in to continue their journey with us.
The reality is, it's never going to be quite that clean, but that's how I'm thinking about it when I'm looking to model EPS accretion for the board, for example. Yeah, just take off that month of April and, and let's say it, or take it off to a degree. Let's get it going, given it's an 18-month progression for the 2026 financial year. So that's a bit sooner than the 18 months, you know, let's take a quarter off, but projection is for 18 months, because that gives us the best degree of conservatism and buffer over what we're trying to achieve here.
Now, we've got some people internally always say, "Whatever you ask in the world of technology, you know, double the time and double the cost." But we don't think that's necessarily the case here. I shouldn't have even said it, but you need to build in contingency and some sort of margin for error, because when you do an acquisition of this nature, there will always be something that surprises you on the downside. It's just the reality of it, and I don't want to be anything but very transparent with the market about what we've got in front of us. All that said, we're entirely confident that we've got the right tech stack and the right people in our technology area to ensure that we can take these clients across.
Perfect. And one more from me. Just on the underlying business, and the balance sheet at the moment, obviously you mentioned that the temporary restricted AUD 20 million of cash, you also mentioned further acquisitions. Are you able to give us a sense of how we should be thinking about... You know, it sounds like the buyback and, and all that's, that's cooling off, but what you've been looking at acquisition-wise, is it a case of bolt-on IOOF or do you want, you know, product tech uplift or, or, or, or how do we think about that side of the business or what you're looking at?
So, if there was a lot more like OneVue, that would be ideal, because it meets what we're looking for. It's essentially, the best opportunity is if it's exactly the same business as we're in, and they bring some... Obviously, that brings more FUA and more clients, which is great for the scale, but they bring some functionality in what they do that expands it, what we can offer the market. And finally, that it's doable, that it can migrate onto our tech stack. But there's no more like OneVue in the market, so, you know, potentially there's opportunities in the non-custody side. You know, OneVue is more a platform business.
There's some opportunity in the non-custody side, where, as I say, we're the largest player in that segment, but it's a bit of a cottage industry, and so we really aspire to do a lot in that. So if there were acquisition in that, they would potentially be attractive for us. In the end, all of these things come back to realistic vendors as well. You know, we sometimes pass on opportunities because the vendor's not, you know, seeking a price that we can get comfortable with.
Perfect. All right, guys, thank you very much for taking my questions.
Thanks, Tom.
Thank you. The next question comes from Warren Jeffries from Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Thanks, guys. Morning, morning, Anthony and, Dave. Just laboring it a little bit, but just trying to quantify the impact for accretion. So right now, if the AUD 4 billion holds and all else remains equal, the business is at the AUD 10 million revenue business with about AUD 3 million of EBITDA, which is a realization of those synergies in full?
Yeah, that's a good way to look at it, Warren. Yeah, yeah.
Dave, is that, is that AUD 3 million a number that's achieved in 18 months, or would that likely be a run rate, given you—I guess you've done the exercise for the board?
Yeah, it's more likely achieved in 18 months, because-
Yep.
Scale businesses work in both directions. So while we'd be taking clients off the Iress one tech, we wouldn't be able to close it down until the last client's migrated. And like I say, then in businesses that have operating leverage, the leverage doesn't work in reverse.
Yeah.
So you'd have something of a fixed cost base to deal with whatever tail you're down to, by the end, or the drawing to a close of the TSA, for example.
Right, so in 18 months, the... You'll have not delivering it, but the business will be achieving 10 and 3. When do the synergies from your side start to kick in? Because it'll take a while before you can get them realized or starting to realize.
Yeah, pretty much in the vein of the answer I gave Tom, which is, think of the full year 2026 as the year where you see that business running full tilt and clean.
So 10, 10 and 3 in 2026, and 10 and something smaller in 2025, it sounds like?
Yeah, that's a good way to look at it, Warren, and obviously, our aspiration will be to you know, get the FUA up and therefore the revenue up as well. And the marginal increase in revenue would be very attractive to the business.
No dramas. Good one. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Warren.
Thank you. At this time, we're showing no further questions. I'll hand the conference back to Anthony for closing remarks.
Thank you very much, and thanks again, everyone, for your interest in the call. And for the questions, thanks to all the people who asked questions. So, we look forward to... you know, we've given ourselves a big challenge now. There's a lot to execute. We've got the EBITDA uplift program that we're working on. We've got an acquisition, and we've got a new next generation product which we think is very exciting. Part of the investment that we've made in the team and the capability, gives us the confidence to take on that sort of workload. But we appreciate everyone who's been on the journey with us so far, and we look forward to executing those big things and moving this business forward.
So in the end, we wanna get back to the aspiration we've got of double-digit revenue and expenses lower than that. As David said, we acknowledge we haven't delivered that to our own satisfaction, let alone anyone else's satisfaction, in the recent period, but that remains our aspiration for this business going forward. But thanks again for the time on the call, and we look forward to meeting with some of you when you all get through the recording period of all your portfolios. We'll leave it at that. Thank you.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.