Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Praemium Limited FY 2022 results briefing. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Anthony Wamsteker, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Welcome to all our shareholders on the call, and thank you for joining us today. Please, if I could just draw your attention to the usual disclaimer, which is included in the presentation as uploaded to the ASX website this morning. Obviously, I won't go through that in any detail, but I do draw your attention to it. I'm delighted to be joined on the call today by David Coulter, who has been a very welcome addition to the Praemium executive team. I'm going to start by reviewing some of the business highlights for the past year, then hand over to David to discuss the financial results. We'll finish up with some of our plans and thinking for the coming year before opening up for questions.
Praemium delivered a record underlying EBITDA result of AUD 16.6 million and record annual Australian inflows of AUD 2.9 billion in 2022. The strong inflow demonstrates Praemium's commitment to participating in the ongoing generational shift in the wealth management platform market share from the historical incumbents to a new generation of challengers. The EBITDA result demonstrates that Praemium has sufficient scale at this point in time to convert revenue growth to profit. That scale now sees Praemium with over AUD 40 billion under administration. Importantly, a little over half of the funds under administration are on our VMAAS non-custodial administration service. This service is critical for serving the high net worth clients, and it's the market leader in that segment. This slide shows the virtuous circle that underpins our strategy. Strong net funds flow will drive growth in FUA.
Obviously, FOA is also impacted by market movement, but the strong net funds flow ultimately converts to FOA. That increase in FOA leads to increase in revenue, which at the scale we've now achieved, we believe will convert into further profitability. Obviously, in the long run, we've announced previously an intention to have a long-run dividend policy arising from that profitability, but this year, a special dividend has been enabled by the sale of the international business. The corporate objectives that we have in Praemium are shown on this slide. Our focus on clients is what drives our product development and our product and our relationship-based growth strategy. In other words, we focus on clients that drives how we attempt to build relationships with those clients and how we develop products for those clients.
The second key pillar of our corporate strategy is the need to attract and develop highly capable people and create an environment for those people to perform at their best. The third key pillar is our particular segment in the market that we target, and that's the high net worth advisor, and increasingly advisors to the emerging high net worth category, who have always been the backbone of our business and continue to drive the growth in our business. Our final pillar is to support the evolution of the advice industry. We've all seen massive change in financial advice of recent years, and obviously we are believers that in the long run that is driving an ever-increasing level of professionalism and evolution in the financial advice industry.
We believe we're very well placed to support that because of the way we've supported the high net worth advisors for years. These two charts serve to show our growth trajectory over a pretty long period of time, going back to financial year 2016 in the case of the top chart, and it shows the strong buildup in net funds flow. The bottom chart, albeit a slightly shorter time period, also shows the strong buildup in FOA, but it also illustrates the market-based challenges that we've had in the second half of the financial year. The international divestment was a major undertaking for our business this year. We are pleased with the process, and in particular, the way it was executed by our people, both those in Australia and our international team who are now with Morningstar.
Attracting talent and creating an environment for people to perform at their best and within a team environment has always been critical to business success. This has never been more evident than in today's tight labor market. Our commitment to building a success-based culture is the cause of the achievements over the past year and the foundation for future growth. Given the blue-chip client base of high net worth advisors, some of the best advisors in Australia, that we serve, it should be no surprise that we win awards in those platform categories which those advisors find the most important. Winning three of the six categories in the Benchmark Investment Trends Survey is testament to our leadership position and the extent to which our developments are maintaining, and in some cases even extending, our leadership position for our particular target market of advisors.
As the financial advice industry continues its rapid evolution, we remain committed to supporting the many modern and sophisticated practices who are delivering outstanding results for their clients in an environment where the demand for their service is growing much faster than usual and where the regulatory changes are being applied at an accelerating pace. I can't overestimate what a challenging environment is for financial advisors, and that's why we remain committed to supporting the advice sector and particularly what we would regard as the modern and sophisticated advisors who are adapting extremely well in those challenging environment. With that, I think it's time to ask David to talk you through the highlights of our financial results. Thank you, David.
Well, thank you, Anthony. Thank you very much. It's been just on five months since I started with Praemium, and delighted to be here to present the group financial results for the full year 2022. I might have been at Praemium only five months, but I've been in the industry or the sector, for the best part of 15 years. I can say that it is a very impressive organization in terms of the focus on client, the focus on customer, the focus on the right sort of advice for the right sort of client, and also the product set that best promotes that. Only too pleased to be here working alongside Anthony.
You can see from the group financial results for the year that we've had a significant revenue growth, 22%, due largely to the organic FUA growth that was generated on the back of the flagship SMA product and also significant growth in our VMAAS portfolio service. The revenue growth itself afforded the ability to invest more significantly in our people and IT capability, which is necessary when you want to stay at the vanguard of developments in this sector. What is pleasing is that where we had lifted the rate of expenditure significantly in the first half, we've been very cognizant of the need to maintain that investment, but not grow it significantly into the second half. The second half expenditures across the group have remained in line with the first and contributed to the uplift in EBITDA result.
As Anthony mentioned, it's a record EBITDA of AUD 16.6 million, and within the guidance that we'd issued earlier in the second half of the financial year. The divestment of the international operations has also meant that per accounting standards, we're only too pleased to be able to do this as well because it does contribute to transparency and a look at the organization going forward, and I will get onto that in further slides. You have a continuing business, which is essentially the Australian segment, and a discontinued operation, and that's split out on this chart here. That the AUD 16.6 million actually splits AUD 19.1 million to the Australian segment and AUD 2.5 million EBITDA in the discontinued or international operations.
Also prominent on this slide is the profit on divestment as part of the statutory profit, AUD 45.7 million from AUD 62 million proceeds, and that's a very significant contributor, obviously, to our significant statutory result. I'd point out that the underlying EBITDA and the segment EBITDA are reconciled to our statutory impact in significant detail at note 20 of the annual report, the financial statements in that annual report. Encourage everyone to look at the detail that underpins the EBITDA, but that reconciles back to our statutory financials as audited by Grant Thornton. Turning now to the Australian segment, just on slide 15 here. The Australian segment, of course, being the bulk of our undertaking, is highly reflective of the achievements we've made in the group overall, particularly at the underlying EBITDA line.
The AUD 19.1 million from 17.7 represents a 7% uplift in EBITDA. Revenue growth of 20%, again, based largely on the organic FUA growth and the flows generated by our SMA and VMAAS services. Again, affording us the opportunity to invest in our people and IT capability. As with the group overall, our cost line has remained stable into the second half of the financial year. That, of course, has given rise to that opening of the doors and the lifting of the EBITDA. Just on slide number 16 here, there's a little more detail in the EBITDA bridge. Starting from 17.7, with a significant uplift on that organic growth of AUD 7 million revenue net of cost of operations, we did operate Powerwrap, acquired in September 2020, for an additional two months of the financial year.
You can see there that while it has contributed clearly to the uplift of AUD 7 million, there's also a drag of AUD 2 million additional expenditure for those two months that we've owned it longer in the 2022 financial year. Notwithstanding, there's a AUD 1.4 million increment to EBITDA afforded us by the synergies. Powerwrap's been a very strong contributor to the group result overall, having now achieved annualized synergies of AUD 4.8 million, which is largely in line with the business case at the point of announcing the acquisition. We expect to continue to extract synergies in line with greater efficiencies as we bring the groups closer and closer together. From that point, we capitalized less of our software R&D in the current year as opposed to 2021.
That's meant that there's been around AUD a half a million impost on the P&L. The other expenditure categories fall into the line of risk management, mostly evenly between a significant uplift in insurance premiums and also an additional cybersecurity overlay in IT services. I think people understand that the cost of these services has increased quite markedly in the post-COVID environment, and we've not fallen victim to that. We do embrace the fact that cybersecurity overlays are a very necessary cost for a business such as ours and largely unavoidable as our business expands. The other category, around AUD half a million, the bulk of which is an increased marketing spend, which we're happy to embrace again as we seek to grow our business and be more relevant to the advisors and the advisory groups that we seek to serve. Just turning now to slide 17.
This is a little more detail on our margins than we'd previously afforded. Over the course of the financial year, the Praemium SMA net revenue margin, which is revenue expressed as a numerator and denominator of average FUA, has been at around 33 basis points, as was advised at the half, and Powerwrap at around 19 basis points, as was advised at the half as well. Stable over the course of the financial year, but with a noticeable uptick towards the end of the year. Now, that's largely based on the contribution of the rises in official cash rates and our ability on the cash balances held in both those products to extract an additional administration fee.
That's something that we and our competitor challenger platforms have been signaling towards very strongly, but is actually very visually represented by what you're seeing here as far as an uptick in margins and an uptick in contribution to revenue goes. Anthony will touch on that very briefly towards the end of our presentation. I'm now on the cash flow slide 18. What's instructive here for this business, in particular, is that our underlying EBITDA is exactly mirrored by our operating cash flow, AUD 16.6 million. The cash pull-through of the business has been very strong in this particular financial year. There are, however, one-off costs associated largely with divesting the international business and then conventional expenditures or cash flows out for intangibles, as well as then a significant investing or net cash movement in from the divestment of the international business.
Last for me, before handing back to Anthony to wrap up remarks and give an outlook to the future, a very strong balance sheet from the business as afforded by the divestment of the international business. Now, of course, this balance sheet is representative of our position exactly at the thirtieth of June, as would be expected given end of financial year and accounting standards. We've moved very quickly to deploy those additional cash reserves, however, not just let them sit there. Repaid debt of around AUD 11 million, issued a special dividend of around AUD 26 million, and we're looking to implement our buyback as of tomorrow, with AUD 14 million for the half signaled, but, an additional expenditure in the months where we're out of trading blackout, to be flagged.
That's something where we essentially have an AUD 25 million aspiration given what we regard as our surplus proceeds from the international divestment. I'll now hand you back to Anthony for our outlook section of the presentation. Thank you.
Thanks, David. We've put this slide up. It's a slide that we've been using internally for a little while now. What we do is just use it to illustrate some of the convergence that's happening in the advice market. That convergence is coming in at least two areas. Firstly, if you think of high net worth, now, not every high net worth individual in Australia is advised, but many of them are. There's a lot of data in that, in the high net worth investment trends report that we sponsor. Same with the retail market. The retail market of clients, many are advised and many are not advised.
The interesting thing is that there is some convergence and the gap between a high net worth client and an advised retail client is narrowing. That's what the overlapping section in part represents as that convergence. The second thing about it is the way wealth is managed is also converging somewhat, and there's a narrowing of the distinction between on and off platform administration or custody and non-custody holdings. Now, these trends, well, it's a very busy slide, and that's why it's in a pack that you can read at your leisure.
Those two trends provide a great opportunity for Praemium as the leading non-custody wealth administration provider and having a significant share of the fastest growing part of the platform market, the more efficient and sophisticated managed accounts part of that market. Our strength in both the managed account and the non-custody area, we believe gives us a very good position as that convergence continues to occur. This next slide shows a little bit more detail behind that and why we've got a competitive advantage. On the left-hand side, as I said, we are the leader in the non-custodial segment of the market. We and you know there are other competitors you know increasingly building that or buying positions in that market.
You can see from our latest results that the assets that we manage in that sector are the highest of anyone and still the fastest growing. Very strong position in the non-custodial market based on the VMA technology that we have, which has got some unique advantages and is an extremely valuable asset of the Praemium Group. The thing that we've done as the platform markets develop is we've developed some again market-leading technology that allows us to offer a better solution on managed accounts. As I've said earlier, that's the fastest growing part of the platform market that is widely acknowledged. The managed account functionality that we offer gives us a strong position in the overall platform market.
The combination of those has been behind what has given us a market-leading position in the high-net-worth segment. Increasingly, there is an emerging high-net-worth segment of people who are progressively building up their wealth, technically might be at the low end of the high net worth, depending on how you define it or are moving into that segment. Many advisors, as we've gone through the evolution of advice that we've talked about, are seeing the value of targeting people in that, in that category. That's why we're very well placed based on the changes that are happening in the financial advice area.
If I just go back to the four pillars that I mentioned at the start, and again, this slide, without going through it line by line, but we have clear plans for building on our competitive advantage within our preferred market segment. Those plans revolve around building out our corporate objectives in those four areas. Some of the goals that we have for ourselves are highlighted on that slide.
I'd like to conclude by saying that myself and David and the board believe that if we can successfully execute on the program and the strategy that we've got, then it all goes well for future growth in net flows, future growth in funds under administration, revenue, and ultimately, that will drop to profitability, and that leads to the thing we flagged earlier, the potential to develop a long-term dividend policy to build on the special dividend from this year. With that, I'll bring my comments to an end. Once again, thank you for your participation and attendance today. I do know now that we've got the opportunity for a number of analysts to put forward some questions. We'll hand over to questions at this point in time.
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 Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Good day, team. Thanks for taking questions. EBITDA outcome looked well ahead of expectations, so that's great. In terms of the restatements, I assume you've just consolidated the corporate and Australian segments together, and then the cost base was flat second half on first half. Can you talk through the reasons for that in the context of the signaled reinvestment in the business that was going on over the first half?
Just in answer to the simple part for me, obviously, as a humble accountant, yes, the corporate segment is rolled up into the Australian segment and should be regarded as doing that from this point forward. As far as the expenditure profile goes, there was a significant uplift in the first half, and we're quite aware that that caught the market by surprise to a degree, even though we had flagged that, you know, to an extent we needed to invest in the business to make sure that it remained relevant. It's a highly competitive space. Anthony, yeah, was here the whole 12 months, and oversaw that, and made his own remarks in February at the half year as to why it was necessary.
An uplift of that significance engineered in that half has done the good we think that it was meant to do in this short period of time. If you're looking, and I know you didn't ask the question specifically, Nick, ahead to the future, we, like any other business in a labor-intense service industry that requires, you know, highly developed technical and specialist skills, we're looking at wage inflation very seriously. We know that's part of the future landscape, and we certainly don't have a plan at all to significantly downsize our workforce because we're expecting our volumes to increase, and we're expecting our business to grow.
We're not going to flag exactly what we think that means in terms of an expenditure uplift, but we're well aware that the first half was something of a surprise, but it did afford us the exact uplifting capability that we wanted for the financial year. Nick, Anthony, did you want to-
Yeah, Nick, I suppose the other thing you might be getting at, if I've read your question right, is
Did we expect that the second half would see more cost growth? Not at the same rate of growth as we had in the first half, but still some which didn't seem to come through. I'll just make two comments about that. The first one, which it was hard to say too much about this in the first half because it would've rung a bit hollow, but we are still actually a relatively frugal organization. That leads to the other point that we put staff on because we felt we needed to do that, you know, both to serve the current market and also because this is a generational shift in market share, and you don't want to miss it.
You'd be letting your shareholders down if you miss out on that and you don't invest in it at the time. Having said that, the second half was, as everyone knows, a tough time in the market, and that did impact on the volume of flows. The sort of uplift that we got in the first half turned out to be enough to take us through the sort of volumes we were having to process in the second half. Now, going forward, I would expect that, like we've said for a while now, we expect that we can run this business in such a way that we should grow the revenue, but we also.
We will have to grow the expense base, partly from inflation, and partly just from increasing the scale of our resource base. We would hope that our growth in total expenses from those two factors should be less than the growth in revenue. That's pretty much the, you know, the assumption we make in the market, that we'll grow revenue, but our expense base should be able to grow at a lower rate over the long run than the revenue.
Thanks for that explanation. That's helpful. I guess the other really interesting disclosure in the presentation was just the revenue margin. I guess there's two points to touch on. The first is the uplift in February 2022. Can you talk through what drove that step change? The step change in May and June. My understanding was you didn't have a lot of leverage to rising interest rates, but has there been some change in cash product fees that's driven that improvement?
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Nick. Look, February is a really unusual month. You present yourself with a data set, and you do a two-point average on each month because you're trying to be transparent to the market about where your earnings are derived. I did notice February and had a look at the ASX 200 as a proxy for that particular month. February was an unusual month in that it started low, built high very quickly, and then dropped dramatically right towards the end of the month. To some degree, there's an elevated FUA in the interim, but the two-point average itself leads to a lower FUA than you actually earn from in the month itself. You'll get some statistical anomalies on very fine margins like that, and that's essentially what's happened there.
February was an unusual one in and of itself, particularly. May, June, we were afforded the opportunity to lift because interest rates were rising as official cash rates. We, and Anthony can certainly talk to this in more detail than I can, but we are afforded the ability to charge up to the limit of our PDS as rates rise above a very low base rate. May, June are reflective of that. The very particular uplift in Powerwrap, we do have some year-end even-ups in that business that are a bit lumpy. It's not solely to do, say, with extracting a higher cash margin from cash balances. The Powerwrap client base itself is one where the cash balance is not as reliably predictable.
We had a higher cash balance than we might have expected around then from that business as well. A confluence of factors in that particular product line for the June number, which we wouldn't expect to replicate quickly in future months. The trend we think in May, June, of course, in RBA rates more broadly and rates across the sector or across the economy lends itself to a fairly favorable outlook on margins for the group overall.
Okay, that's interesting. There's a true up with the Powerwrap book where they might pay a bit extra in June. That 28 group run rate margin may not be sustainable, but you should be looking at sort of a move in that direction from, I think the average in 2022 was 24 basis points. You'd be sort of thinking somewhere towards 28, but maybe not annualizing 28 as it stands.
Yeah. Not using 28 as a platform to start and then growing it out, no.
Cool. I might leave it there and pop back in the queue. Thanks.
Thanks, Nick.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Lafitani Sotiriou with MST. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, guys, and congratulations on a good result. Just a few questions from me, if I may. I wouldn't mind diving back in just to the cost component and look as a very good outcome, second half not growing increasing on first half, but to I guess avoid some element of surprise in financial year 2023 with expectations around cost and there's some comments that are made that you expect to get greater efficiencies out of Powerwrap. Just to reconcile that with your expected increases in investment to capture the opportunity, how should we think about it from the Australian business for Praemium at EBITDA margins around 40%-45%, and that's adjusted for the corporate cost, and it's sitting around 30% now.
Do you think it's realistic that you should be able to get the Australian business EBITDA margin over the medium term back towards 40%? Or how should we think about it, I guess, more near term, and also over the medium term?
Thanks, Lafitani. Look, we haven't, as you know, we don't put guidance out on revenue and expenses exactly, but we have been on the record as saying, "Look, we anticipate that we should grow revenue at double digits for the foreseeable future, and that our expenses should grow less than revenue." As we've shown, I think the takeaway from this last half year is that if you're having a half where, for whatever reason, you're not getting quite the same level of growth as you might expect longer term, which happened to us, you know, we didn't quite get the level of growth that we had been getting in revenue and FUA, and we attribute that to the market conditions.
There's a degree of flexibility not to put the staff on quite as quick. You know, if revenue grows at 20% compared to 10%, which are all double digit numbers, expenses will grow differently depending on what the revenue grows, because there is that ability to respond how quickly the business is coming on and therefore what you've got to invest in terms of the service. Rather than saying, "Oh, here is the longer term EBITDA that we target," I do think, you know, we expect a gap between revenue expenses or positive jaws, another way to say that, and that as we grow over time, that obviously leads to increasing EBITDA margin. You know, we're not precisely forecasting what that might be. We do know, you know, everyone better.
But-
Yeah, sorry, Lafitani, I'll let you go.
No. Got it. That makes sense. We don't really expect another step change in cost, but of course you'll track higher with the revenue as it, and if it does increase, obviously, depending on where markets are and so forth. There shouldn't be any other surprises where like we saw at the first half on the cost base.
We don't think so, no. We're not, you know, we've got no assumption of any big cost increases required to maintain the current level of growth and investment in product and the like.
Got it. Why don't I move on? Just moving on to the pipeline and can I break it up by for VMAAS versus the platform more broadly? Now, VMAAS is by its nature, there are some big, I guess, client wins that can transpire in that space. Can you just talk us through a little bit of the market dynamic at the moment? Are there many RFPs, clients looking to move their to an outsource arrangement from in-house to outsourcing or have most of the big moves occurred? If you can just talk to VMAAS first.
Then secondly, looking at the platform space more broadly, where are you starting to see greater traction from the investment that you've had over the years in your sales team? Like, is there a particular cohort of the market that you're starting to win more with? Is it, say, as an example, with smaller advisor groups, or is it more in the broking space? Can you just talk us through the type of traction you're getting in on that on the platform side?
Yeah. Okay, good. Thank you. VMAAS, the answer is it the bigger clients are lumpy in terms of pipeline. You know, you do get big client wins from time to time. Obviously, you know, we've had a couple of big client wins over the years and got some a number of major clients using the VMAAS service, and there's more opportunities for that we you know have conversations with and there would be what we call a pipeline. But obviously it's commercially sensitive information. There is a range of smaller wins and as you can imagine, not necessarily all the smaller advisors go through the same RFP process that a larger client might have the resources to manage.
You're having those conversations all the time. Our sales team is structured so that there is an incentive and a motivation to sell the VMAAS service as well as the platform service. If I then go on to the platform, again, you know, similar sort of pipeline as what we've seen for a number of years, in the sense that there are more and more advisors who are willing to look at their platform and take advantage of the potential to shift to the newer platforms. That's why we have an underlying assumption in the way we run our business, that the platform shift is far from over, and that will, that generational shift that we've been a party to so far will continue for some time.
Are there different sort of opportunities? Certainly, we have done quite a bit of work to just fully understand why we win some opportunities and not others. While there's a degree of complexity to that, it does come back to this target market that we've got. You know, we've always been more successful in the higher net worth advisor. We've always been more successful with people who have more complex needs or needs for a broader range of assets. We do make sure that most of our effort is focused on that particular opportunity. Fortuitously, it's the fastest growing part of the overall platform opportunity anyway.
As to, you know, the investment we make, the final point I'd just like to close with is that sales teams become more productive over time in the organization. Our team was built up more recently than some of the other platform businesses. We've got, on average, a younger team, but a younger team, not necessarily in age, I mean, in tenure with us. They do become more productive over time. Now, obviously, that plateaus out, but we've been riding a good curve, and we're still in that curve of people, sales people progressively becoming more productive as they have longer tenure with the organization, get to know the product better, and are able to use their increased knowledge in building the relationship.
Of course, their clients and their network gets more confident once they've been here longer. Somebody who's just joined Praemium and says to their network, "Look, I'm with Praemium," probably doesn't have quite the same success who has been there for a year or two and talking to their network. They say, "Oh, yeah, well, you've been there for a while now, and you really like it, and you've got something good to say about the product." We're still riding that curve. It's still got a bit to go, but that's, you know, given us a better return on investment, if you like, because you know, investing in somebody who's been here three years, you get a better payback than somebody who's just joined.
I've got it. Can I just move on to a couple other questions? Asgard are part of the Panorama sale, they're still a client, right, of yours utilizing the tax reporting. Can you just remind us how much longer that contract's got to run and how much revenue is in it? Just moving on to the technology side, both of you are relatively new into the role, and you've done a few just considerations around the technology roadmap that you would no doubt have reviewed. Can you just talk us through, has there been much change in what you guys have put on the roadmap in terms of the integration of Powerwrap?
Have you canceled some of the spending that you think was not necessarily going to give you bang for buck and, in terms of the integration or, I guess, what's been on the roadmap?
I'll take the second part of your question first, Lafitani. Look, yes, the roadmap has changed, and there is an increasing commitment to the Powerwrap integration now on the roadmap than there was six months or twelve months ago. It's not any dramatic change in direction. It was to do with the changes that we needed to make in the SMA product too. It's not as if Powerwrap was the only initiative. There were some very important initiatives in the SMA product that we needed to make, and we were working through those. Powerwrap is now the highest priority on our roadmap, and there is good progress being made.
As part of that, you know, people might ask quite rightly, "Well, why wasn't it your number one priority?" There was a lot of research into why it wasn't the number one priority. It was the number two priority, if you like. But part of the reason it was number two too was that there was a lot of pre-work to be done just planning through what changes needed to be made to the Powerwrap product to fully utilize the other technology that Praemium had. As you know, I was with Powerwrap, not in an executive role, non-executive role at Powerwrap.
The fundamental thing for us at Powerwrap and the reason we were happy to endorse the takeover by Praemium at the time was because we just knew that Praemium had done a tremendous job, had a tremendous technology team. The tools that they were building around the core engine, like Powerwrap always used the Praemium core engine, but the user experience tools and the other tools that Praemium was building around that core engine were better than what Powerwrap could do. Nothing wrong with the Powerwrap people or anything like that, but Powerwrap had a bigger team, had more budget, and had a more intimate knowledge of the core engine and how you would integrate with that.
When we moved into the Praemium world, there was a fair bit of planning that had to go on about which of the Powerwrap tools have got functionality that we, you know, haven't yet fully replicated and we would lose if we just migrated, and how do we do that? There was all that planning went on and, as I say, in the meantime, there were some fundamental developments we needed to make on the Praemium SMA, which have now been made. Powerwrap is now the highest priority on the roadmap. In terms of, I'm sorry, I think your question was about the financial benefits and what we're seeing in the Powerwrap and Praemium integration. Have I remembered that right, Lafitani?
No, no. It was just following up on, 'cause I know Asgard obviously is within-
Oh.
The Panorama sale. It will drop off, I guess, at some point, I imagine, from, as a revenue source. I just can't remember the quantum and the nature of the contract that you have in place with Asgard.
Yeah. Look, the nature of the contract is, it goes close to a fixed annual fee at the moment. It is based on the number of portfolios, but there's a you know fixed element to it. Depending on the number of portfolios and how much they're using the system, it can finish up as a fixed price. It's basically a fixed revenue line for us at the moment. We don't see a lot of volatility, and we don't anticipate a lot of volatility.
Is the quantum around AUD 1 million? I can't remember. Is it AUD 1 million revenue? Is it 2?
I'm hesitant to give you the answer simply because I don't know the confidentiality aspects. Obviously, you may have been in possession of that information before. I don't mean to say I can't tell you, but I do have clients in the client base who are uncomfortable with me disclosing the revenue. It is, it's one of our top
15 clients by revenue. Asgard is a very important client. Since Asgard's been part of Panorama, we have always anticipated it could ultimately move away, and it's never moved away yet. Panorama, when it gets sold, the new owners might say, "Well, we'll be more determined to move away, and we'll make that happen faster than it has happened by not happening under the Panorama ownership." You know, I hope that they continue to not move away, but it's when we look at our business risks, it's one of those business risks. The final point I just want to make, though, the reason they haven't moved away is not 'cause they're great benefactors of Praemium, and they just want us to do well.
They haven't moved away 'cause there is stuff that is unique in the VMA engine that everyone, when they're talking and pitching to clients, says, "Oh, yeah, well, we finally caught up to Praemium. We do what they do." The reality is it is still the market-leading software and the value is most evident for higher net worth clients who really benefit from the power of the VMA technology. To the extent that Asgard serves a different segment to the wider Panorama platform, they might find in the end, as they've found so far, that for what they pay us, it's not worth building out the functionality that Praemium offers. You know, I know they won't recoup an investment like that for years.
You know, they'll have to invest a lot more than what they're paying us probably over the next 10 years. It may not go, but it is a business risk that it might go.
Cool. Just final question from me. I mean, just comments around the dividend and, you know, obviously the special dividend, no doubt, was well appreciated by investors. Just to better understand now with the international business gone and, you know, a profitable Australian business left, can you just give us a little bit more color as to how we should think about when, what considerations are going into the decision on when the dividends are likely to start, on an underlying basis? Is there a level with the buyback in place over the next year where you would consider it's not that efficient for us to be buying back shares?
Like if the share price started to have a run, is there a level that you would pull it back, or is it just a case that you would work through the buyback in its entirety?
Well, look, Lance, the plan at the moment is to work through the buyback assiduously. We can't predict with any great degree of confidence or certainty that sort of what you guys are paid to do as to what the share price might do in the future. It's still accretive, of course, to retire some shares on an EPS basis. So we see the value in it while we've got surplus proceeds. You're right, we'll have an ongoing profitable segment on an EBITDA basis. That said, you know, there are constraints on us, of course, in as much as we do seek to continue to be relevant and at the leading edge of software development in the sector in which we participate. There's a cost to that. You can almost say there's a substitution cost, depreciation, amortization out and the R&D CapEx in.
They're not exactly matched, but it gives you some sort of flavor for the cash drag for engaging in that sort of activity as well. The one thing going the other way, of course, is we've got Powerwrap tax losses to apply. Whilst, yes, we'll be having a cash out on PAYG for the Praemium business, on a consolidated basis, we should be able to reduce that cash out tax burden as well. 513 million shares on issue or thereabout means, that's what we've got to take into consideration for a dividend. How do we reward that cohort of shareholders on that sort of annuitized, post-tax outcome?
Hopefully, again, because we don't have a perfect line of sight on the future, you know, we have a very less volatile set of circumstances we're looking into as far as those one-off costs go. Don't have an international divestment to go. We don't have any burning need to mount, say, a defense or corporate development, which took a lot of cash out of the business in 2022, and there are other events, of course, in 2021 in terms of restructuring. They're the factors that I'll take into account with Anthony, with the board when we look, say, at the first half result and then more broadly at the full year result for 2023 as to what is sustainably affordable. They're all the factors you'd expect me to touch on.
That's where we sit in line with, okay, these are the things you can reasonably predict. What we can't predict is volatile markets and their impact on top line. That's why we're sort of flagging. We're saying this is the intention. We look to do this because we've got a profitable, sustainable business into the future. Let's see how that result rolls out with what sort of surplus we can generate from the activity we engage in. It's certainly the intent.
Excellent. Thanks for the questions.
Thanks, Lance.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question comes from Nic Burgess with Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, guys. Just a question on the second half performance of the business. David, am I right in saying that the EBITDA from the Australian business was about AUD 1 million in the second half? Oh, sorry, AUD 11 million in the second half?
Oh, yeah. No, you took me a little by surprise there.
Yeah, it's about AUD 1 million?
Yeah, about AUD 1 million. No, it's about AUD 11 million.
Sorry, late in reporting season. It's about AUD 11 million.
That's it, Nick. That's right.
Just if I annualize that hypothetically as a base to start FY 2023, there's a few one-offs and things that have been spoken about previously that I just wanted to clarify what the impact on that sort of run rate might be. Firstly, there's about AUD 1 million worth of costs in China, Shenzhen, I think, that were going to persist after the divestment of the international business. Is that still the case? And if so, how should we account for that? Is that included in that AUD 11 million or not as we look at it today?
Look, it's included in the AUD 11 million , but largely recovered via intercompany charges to the international business. You know, it was flagged as it being around AUD 1 million. I think we should be able to do better than that in terms of whatever the stranded cost is of operating that business and what we can't recover from Morningstar. We're essentially operating those Asian businesses to support the divestment of the international business and the goodwill that we've generated with Morningstar on it. It's just a necessary part of the deal, in other words. I think of it as being just part of the net cost of having received the AUD 62 million in.
Okay. It's included in the AUD 11 million , so we don't need to model it separately.
No.
Okay. That was my point. Second point, in the second half, generally, I think the company makes maybe up to AUD 1 million, maybe a little bit more on some cost recoveries that are a one-off annual charge. Is that still the case? If we're annualizing that AUD 11 million, is that something we need to take account of?
Yeah, that's right. The cost recovery works out to be about two-thirds, one-third, the way it's put to the accounts. I think we'll have a good look at whether or not next year we're going to do the same sort of phasing profile on that cost recovery. I understand why there was a reluctance at half year to bank on that. The more we look at the way that, say, superannuation trustees and regulators more broadly are open to the idea that there's a set of compliance and regulatory costs that they have necessarily imposed on the sector, but that have to be recovered somewhere. Yeah, there's a lot more confidence that those costs are recoverable at a certain level now than they have been in the past. I think you'll see more even phasing over the two halves.
You're right in thinking the recovery is higher in the second half. Yes.
Yeah. Okay. We need to take account of that. Your earlier comment on corporate costs, you said that that's been rolled into the Australian business, but bottom of slide 15, you break it out separately. Is that included in the corporate costs or should we be adding it?
It's just to break them out because we had disclosed them in the past, and I felt it was necessary to keep faith with all of you who have to fill your models. Yes, this is where these need to go. I mean, corporate costs, you know, two of them are sitting in front of you on this presentation. We're not going anywhere. We're more, you know, we belong in the Australian segment clearly more than we belong in the international. They've got very significant senior management in and of itself in that part of the business and now with Morningstar.
All right, that clarifies. It's a reasonable base to start from. There's a couple of moving parts, but that second half performance is generally sustainable from the comments that you've just made.
Yeah. Look, I'm happy to engage with any shareholder, any analysts on ways in which we can put a result to market that helps, you know, within the bounds of not breaking confidentiality or making sure that we're just still adherent to accounting standards. But I'm happy to engage on any basis to improve the transparency and the ability to model from what we've put to the market.
Thank you. Just last question, how much are you able to say how much is left in the ANZ product in terms of funds on platform?
I haven't got an exact number in front of me, and the reason I don't focus on it too strongly is it is not much. That has largely washed its way through. It will no longer have a significant impact on flows. I'm more comfortable with the idea that we report it as part of our operating rhythm as well in terms of flows, rather than calling it out and separating it, because winning and losing different businesses is a natural part of being in this sector.
Yep. Okay. Thank you. Cheers.
Thanks, Nick.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Wamsteker for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thanks again to the three of you who had some questions for us. Much appreciated. Thank you to everyone else for taking the time to listen to our annual results presentation. We're looking forward to the challenge of the year ahead, and we look forward to hopefully meeting many of you in person later in the year when we have our AGM. Thanks for taking the time to join the call, and look forward to seeing you soon. Enjoy the rest of your day.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.