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Earnings Call: Q2 2025

Jan 22, 2025

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

The full range of investment alternatives that high net worth advisers like to use when they're dealing with their clients and constructing a portfolio for those clients, and I think everyone's aware that the range of asset types that people are holding is, it's always expanded, but it's probably never expanded more than it has over the last couple of years. Obviously, Australian equities still make up the largest part of portfolios. It's still the biggest holding in the average high net worth portfolio, but it's gradually reducing. The wealth in Australia is expanding at a faster rate than the Australian share market itself, and so we're starting to see a whole range of alternative assets, and hence the value of Spectrum for Advisers because it is the ultimate high net worth solution, as we say. We don't think we're overstating the solution by saying that.

We feel that that is what it is. Certainly, the feedback we get is that Spectrum is really meeting the mark for the high net worth adviser. Some of the things there, bonds are back, as everyone knows. Bonds are a very important part of portfolios. That's not going away. Alternative assets, structured products, and the like. The Praemium ability to manage those and execute those portfolios for advisers is critical, and Spectrum brings all those capabilities together in the one product. With that, I'll hand over to David, and we'll talk about the quarterly flows.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

Okay. Thanks very much, Anthony. Thanks for joining the call as well. Got all the basic numbers down here. I won't dwell on each necessarily, but I'm very, very pleased to point to Spectrum coming off Anthony's last slide. We've got FUA on platform at AUD 30.2 billion, up 4%. There's both flow and market-based movement as a part of that 4% uplift, with Spectrum contributing AUD 72 million. Based on flows of AUD 69 million, if you look at the second major paragraph on the page, where we've got net inflows of AUD 371 million, which were up AUD 232 million on the prior comparative or the prior quarter itself, these being comparisons to September 2024. So significant movement in SMA. Powerwrap has returned to good favor, and OneVue is stable at AUD 4.2 billion. Just briefly on OneVue with AUD 37 million in net outflow.

We're extremely pleased with the way that OneVue is integrating into the organization. This was not purchased to be some sort of organic growth engine, although we expect that the clients that come across with OneVue will be organic growth positive once they're on the Praemium technology. Anthony did refer briefly to that integration being on track. As far as the flows go, Spectrum at AUD 69 million is effectively 20% of our overall flow without it having adversely affected at all the performance of the SMA, which itself is up AUD 96 million, nor Powerwrap at AUD 78 million, which has now returned to net inflow. It's up AUD 138 million on the September quarter.

We had flagged in our previous update, and we flagged, if you look at some of the detail in the ASX release, that we expected Powerwrap outflows from departed advisers to continue at a certain rate. That has actually continued into this quarter, and that's part of the Q&A I've observed as well. Powerwrap's performance and its uplift in performance is based way more on improved inflow from existing groups. We've had very strong performances from some of our clients, which are going very strongly. And even the particular client, which has had some of the adverse impact from departed advisers, has had very strong gross inflow as well. So there's improvement all around on Powerwrap.

And the reference I made earlier, the launch of Spectrum, with that AUD 69 million having effectively been generated largely in the month of December, if you consider a mid to late October launch and preparatory work in November, that's been generated off the back of one month's worth of inflow, represents contributions from approximately, I think it's about, from memory, six client groups. They're all existing clients, but it is that they've seen Spectrum as a great opportunity to put more on platform from their existing client base. So we're extremely pleased with that first-off result from Spectrum, and in particular, reemphasizing that it has not had some sort of transfer or adverse impact on our other platform solutions. Just focus now on the non-custodial. We're very strong in recognizing that this group has the leading non-custodial solution in the market.

FUA from our Scope+ solution is at AUD 31.9 billion. That's a record, and it's up 5% on the previous quarter. Portfolio numbers have diminished slightly. That will happen. We haven't been producing this level of detail for very long. If you had access to internal numbers, as of course we've got, you'd note that periodically some of our major clients do a cleanup, really, of their books, and they will rationalize the number of portfolios they have, particularly for low-balanced clients. And that's what's occurred in this instance. One major client has performed a cleanup, a rationalization, and that's resulted in a slight dip in the portfolios, but we expect the overall growth trajectory to be fairly strong over the course of the financial year.

We've signed up seven new client groups in the quarter, and that brings us to 12 new client groups for VMA and VMAAS in the course of the two quarters that make up the half year for the financial year to date. And the last part of the presentation, these are the detailed tables that are also in the ASX release. They're just copied and pasted here so that you can see any of the detail. What's highlighted here, really, if you look at the gross inflows improving, the net out, the gross outflows remaining relatively stable, and net inflow performance being an improvement across the board, particularly over the five quarters that we're observing. I mean, this is the SMA's best performance. For example, this is our cornerstone product. It's our best performance in two years at AUD 261 million in for the quarter.

So Anthony and I, we've been looking at these numbers and discussing at board level, and we're very, very pleased with the performance, particularly in the way that the existing products have performed at their strongest for many periods, and Spectrum's a great overlay on top that's bringing new money into our platform solutions. So with that, I'll just go leave the detail on the screen, and we'll go to some of the Q&A. You might observe that everyone is able to access the Q&A function. You might be surprised to learn that some of the questions have a very consistent theme to them, so as has been done in previous quarters, I'll curate to some degree so that we're just hitting the themes that you're putting to us through these questions, so we won't be answering each question in turn.

I'd also just make the point, because there are a few coming through, that we are due to announce our actual half-year result on the 25th of February. There are questions here that are asking, "Well, what does this mean for your result?" We're clearly unable to answer those questions, and we will be waiting till we produce the result. So some questions on how Spectrum's performing. I think I've answered a few of those just through the general spiel. Trading activity through the second quarter.

As I said, we'll talk about that when we go to the result. And we've talked about OneVue to some degree, and a few questions are coming in there, which is really that it's on track. There's a specific question on the cash proportions in OneVue being much higher versus the other schemes. There's no particular reason for this, and we expect will change post-transition in answer to a very specific question from Nick McGarrigle from Barrenjoey. The pipeline for Spectrum, Anthony, there's a few questions coming in on that. Do you have a comment?

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

Yeah. Look, the pipeline continues to be very healthy. We're delighted with the way our distribution team is performing, our BDMs. They've had some good tailwinds because the launch of Spectrum and the publicity around that, the advertising we did around that has created a lot of opportunity for conversations with advice groups, and they've taken advantage of that, and so our sales pipeline is very healthy. We're pleased with it. It's as good as it's been in the time I've been here.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

There are some questions on Spectrum and Euroz Hartleys. We've put a comment, I think if you go to the slide on that, that Euroz Hartleys is due to commence writing to the Spectrum product in future quarters. I think we've said as much in our media releases on Euroz Hartleys as we'd be able to say at any other point. We'll, of course, be able to refresh the market on the 25th of February. There's a very good question here too. If we were to take out the impact of the major client in our non-custodial solutions, would portfolio numbers have grown? The answer to that is yes, they would have. That's the actual impact of that activity. There is another question here on dividend payments going forward. Again, we'd address that in more detail as we get to the 25th of February.

I'll reiterate what we've said in many of those forums, which is we have an active share buyback. It's gone into recess due to blackout. Our preference, given we have an availability of franking credits, is to pay dividends where franking credits are available, and we'll be able to be more forthcoming on that when we produce the result. There's also a question on, and we had flagged this in some of our other material, price increases for non-custodial portfolios during the half. Anthony, any reflections?

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

Yeah. So we are starting to put through the non-custodial portfolio price changes. There hadn't been any changes for 10 years, so we're obviously following that through with all of our clients, talking to those clients who have raised questions about the size of the increase. It does vary a little bit from client to client, depending on the particular rate card they're on and how many portfolios they've got, but it was a significant increase over 10%, and that will start to flow through. But there won't be much in the half-year result about that because it was an end-of-year event, but from the 1st of January onwards, we should start to notice the impact of those price increases on the non-custodial services, Scope and Scope+.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

Yeah. I think in fairness to some of the signaling we've done last year and where we thought we would be going through contracts individually, as we progressed through, we realized it would be easier to construct a uniform contract that we issued to many clients at once as a holistic upgrade to the service and with a price increase embedded. And that's why it's now more of a 1st of January big bang across a significant part of the client portfolio. And excuse me a minute while I just go through some of the other questions here. This is a left-field one. How does closing its managed accounts product? Are you seeing opportunities to take that FUA from them, Anthony?

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

Not specifically. When you look at our numbers, both gross and net, and when we publish the half-year, we give a bit of a breakdown of how much is from new advisers who have signed up in the last 12 months compared to advisers that have been with us for longer. And there's more information there about where we're winning from, but obviously the size of the gross flows that come out every quarter shows that we are getting a lot of business, not just from existing advisers, but obviously from new advisers signing up over time.

And it's not as if we're ever winning from any particular alternative platform. I've often said when we win business, it seems to be fairly well spread where we win from. It's not as if we suddenly win a whole lot of business from one platform or another. The market share of all the other platforms is roughly equal to the market share of where we win our business from.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

Another question on the extent to which we've had our SMA and Spectrum increases driven by new client wins. I'd referred in my piece on this that the Spectrum wins were from our existing clients, and we're very pleased to receive the money in. Comments on the SMA?

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

Again, our sales pipeline, there's a strong discipline about opportunities in the pipeline moving through or being closed out. So every month, there are wins coming through. Now, some wins are significant enough that you want to announce them. Euroz Hartleys is an example of that, a very sizable win and worth announcing in its own right. Most are smaller advice firms who are dropping through. If ever there are big opportunities in the pipeline when we win those, we announce them as we should.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

To be fair to the way that I propose it, the majority of the clients into Spectrum are existing clients. There was one significant new client win in the Spectrum flows as well, so there's due heed to that and needs to be paid, and then questions on whether or not at $69 million for the month or for the quarter, and I had pointed to it being largely a month of December win, whether that's a reasonable run rate. The truth on that one is that it's very new product. It is difficult to tell. It is difficult to communicate to you that we expect anything. We're hoping to really ramp up what it is that Spectrum's able to achieve, but we're not putting that as a promise. I think it's reasonable to say with the new product launch that there will be fits and starts.

There'll be some quiet months. There'll be some really busy months. And some of this will be the extent to which we're getting our client base and our new clients, such as Euroz Hartleys, used to the onboarding process and the features that we've got available to them with the Spectrum product. So I think we need a little more time to run before we'd start to point to what it is we'd expect. You also think about our existing product set. We can't point you to seasonal factors nor recurring run rates in Powerwrap nor SMA either. So it's always difficult modeling these businesses, and we appreciate that, but I wouldn't be looking at 69 for the month and just extrapolating that out. And then one of the catch-all questions on other acquisition opportunities, Anthony?

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

So there's not many businesses similar to OneVue, obviously, in the market. We do keep an active eye on businesses that are exactly the same as what we do or very similar to what we do. And obviously, OneVue was in that category, but there's not many OneVues around that would be worth looking at. I note that Mason Stevens recently transacted into private equity hands, but Mason Stevens and Dash are probably the two next platforms after us in terms of market share. Then you get into non-custodial businesses. We are clearly the largest non-custodial provider in the market, and there are some subscale businesses, back offices, and things like that where there might be opportunities. So we keep a book open on a whole lot of opportunities, but obviously nothing that we've had cause to announce since the OneVue.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

And then also a question here, an interesting one. Given the performance of Spectrum and the other products, are we considering adding additional distribution headcount to the service or to take advantage of that?

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

We're pretty happy with the size of the team, and the team did increase with the OneVue acquisition and with the sales force or the distribution people that came in with OneVue, which we were delighted to have come into the Praemium business. We're pretty happy with that at the moment. That said, if the opportunity arises to recruit some of the better BDMs in the market, we always remain open to that. Some of the sales success we have now is because we have, in the past, recruited some highly talented BDMs, and the longer they serve with Praemium, the more effective they become. They become more familiar with the product range and the selling features of it. And so at the moment, we're happy with the size of the team, but we don't rule out modest expansion if the right people come available to us.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

Great. There are a number of other questions coming in on trading performance and dividends. I think we've said as much as we're going to say on those matters. In the lead-up to announcing the half-year result, as I said, 25th of February, and looking forward to doing that. We're at the end of the Q&A section. I'm not seeing any other questions coming in. Any final remarks before we close?

Anthony Wamsteker
CEO, Praemium

No, I think it's a good milestone. Obviously, we acknowledge the markets have been good too, but it's pleasing that the total FUA in Scope+ in the platform business is now over AUD 60 billion. I note that milestone, which is a commendable effort by our team, our total team, everyone who works at Praemium. I think when we went past 50, we said you take the opportunity at those sort of big number milestones to say, "Well, let's use that as a stepping stone to go on to 100." So it hasn't taken long to go from AUD 50 billion to AUD 60 billion, as I say, partly the markets, but partly the strong growth in our products. And I can assure everyone on the call, we do have an eye on getting to the AUD 100 billion.

But thanks again for your interest, and look forward to presenting again, as David said, on the 25th of February.

David Coulter
CFO, Praemium

Okay. Thank you very much. We'll close the call now.

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