Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the PEXA Group Limited 1H 2022 Result Conference Call. 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. Glenn King, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and I'm pleased to welcome you all to PEXA's results for the first half of financial year 2022. I'm Glenn King. I'm the PEXA Group Managing Director and CEO, and joining me is our CFO, Richard Moore. Today, we'll cover the PEXA Group's first half financial year 2022 business highlights, financial performance, and provide a trading update, including an upgrade to our prospectus FY 2022 forecast, given our strong performance to date. Now, there is a presentation that has been distributed. I will cover some of those, and I'll talk to particular slides. Those who are following the slides, go on to Slide 5. Obvious things to talk on here is PEXA is a leading Australian technology company whose platforms are relied upon by financial institutions, property developers, legal and conveyancing firms, and consumers across the country.
Our PEXA Exchange platform sits at the heart of the Australian property market, processing now 84% of property transfers and nearly 100% of all refinances nationally. The COVID-19 pandemic has certainly driven a strong shift to digital, and despite lockdowns across the country at various points of time, the property market in Australia has remained incredibly robust. In fact, as noted in our recent PEXA Property and Mortgage Insights report, during calendar year 2021, buyers spent more than AUD 688 billion on the Australian property market, up 57% on 2020. In fact, New South Wales took the lead for the highest aggregate value of sale settlements in 2021, with AUD 262 billion spent on property in the state during the year.
Queensland was a standout performer in 2021, recording the most sale settlements of any state at 232,000, which was up 40% year-on-year. In fact, what we saw in 2021 was a total of 617,000 new loans were taken out in 2021 to fund the purchase of property, which was also up 32% on the prior year. In short, it's been a very buoyant property market, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, it's certainly accelerated digital transactions, and this has contributed to the strong PEXA performance in the first half of 2022. If I just give you a couple of lenses, we've certainly made great progress with our strategy around the PEXA Exchange, PEXA Insights, our international expansion, and with PX Ventures.
We've had a strong first half in terms of volumes, revenue, and EBITDA, driven by the very strong Australian property market. We continue to execute on our clear strategy, enhancing the core PEXA Exchange service in Australia, replicating it in new international Torrens title jurisdictions, appropriately extending into new services around insights and ventures, and continually building and strengthening our services to the PEXA people, platform, and brand. In the first half of this year, the core Exchange continues to deliver on scale. We've introduced new PEXA customers and members, new services and new document types and new jurisdictions. As I mentioned, the PEXA International is tracking the plan in the U.K., and we're gaining commercial traction in Insights and Ventures. We're both delivering new services to market. In fact, we're excited to announce an investment in the exciting PropTech business, Landchecker, which I'll cover in more detail later.
Importantly, we've continued to focus on our people, on ESG impacts and initiatives, underpinned by our purpose, PEXA's commitment to transform the property experience for everyone. We continually work with numerous stakeholders across the country, including regulators, to ensure that we get good industry reform. Lastly, as I mentioned, we're very pleased to confirm this morning that we're upgrading our prospectus FY 2022 forecast. Now, on Slide 6 of our presentation, a couple of highlights here. At both the financial and operational level, we've had a very strong first half for the financial year 2022. Our group revenue was up 46% year-on-year to AUD 145 million. Our PEXA Exchange transactions were up 37% year-on-year to 2.1 million. The PEXA Exchange EBITDA was up 76% to AUD 83 million, with our EBITDA margin up 10 points to 57%.
In fact, 84% of all property transactions now nationally pass through the PEXA Exchange. All of these metrics have performed ahead of our expectations. As I mentioned, we're pleased to upgrade our FY 2022 financial guidance. Now, on slide 8 of the presentation, a couple of things. We had a clear strategy, and we continue to execute on our strategy. We're enhancing the core Exchange in Australia. We're replicating our services in new Torrens title jurisdictions. We're appropriately extending to build deeper customer relations and providing new services, and we're continually investing in our people, platform, and brand. This all underpins our commitment to transform the property experience for everyone. To do this, importantly, as per our values, we look to innovate for good. We look to make things happen and make it count.
We're really strong about being better together with our customers, our stakeholders, and our people. On Slide 9, you know, a couple of things I want to talk about here. We have established a leading and highly trusted tech platform, the PEXA Exchange, and we are now leveraging our knowledge, experience, expertise, and relationships with industry stakeholders and partners to pursue a number of growth opportunities across three key focus areas. PEXA International, which is seeking to replicate our success with Exchange in Australia into new offshore markets. PEXA Insights, which seeks to appropriately harness our near- real-time accurate and comprehensive property data from Exchange and other data sources to generate valuable data-driven insights and services for industry, government, consumers, and other stakeholders.
PX Ventures, which seeks to build on PEXA's digital and industry experience, innovation, and entrepreneurial culture and establish relationships to develop new business tech opportunities with partners for the benefit of consumers, businesses, and the governments across the property sector. I'll cover some of these now in more detail across the following slides. On Slide 10, the majority of land transactions now occur on the PEXA Exchange. Now, buying a home is one of the most important purchases many people make in their lifetime, and it is PEXA's role to make that experience as efficient, safe, and reliable as possible, increasing certainty to industry participants, home buyers, and sellers alike. We take that very seriously. The momentum for digital transactions continues to accelerate with the PEXA Exchange processing now more than 10 million property transactions since the platform's inception, equating to more than AUD 2 trillion in property value.
In the first half of financial year 2022, our total market volumes grew positively, with national transfer volumes up 23% and refinances up 43%. This delivered a total market growth of 24%. This, combined with PEXA share growth, drove PEXA volumes to record levels. We're a number- one trusted provider. The platform of PEXA is trusted by the majority of all property lawyers and conveyancers nationally, as well as Australia's mortgage lending community, and is known for being safe and efficient. Now, on Slide 11, a couple of things to call out. As I mentioned, the PEXA Exchange transaction volumes are up 37% year-on-year. Our transfer market share increased to 84%, which is up from 78% on the equivalent period.
We successfully launched into the ACT, a new jurisdiction now live on the PEXA Exchange platform, and we continually support the regulator in understanding the technical complexity of regulatory reform such as interoperability. In response to our customer feedback, we've made more than 230 platform enhancements to the PEXA Exchange, such as Vendor Surplus Auto Calculator. We've combined with ongoing enhancements and innovation to reinforce the trust we've built with our customers, lawyers, conveyancers, financial institutions who use the PEXA Exchange every day. In fact, our Net Promoter Score remains as a leader with +60 Net Promoter Score, indicating strong satisfaction with the PEXA Exchange platform. That's across all our customer segments, from practitioners, property developers, banks, and the broader industry. That reflects in the strong brand trust that we've got.
We were rated at 8.9 out of 10, which is number one in the sector. We've got to keep going, and we will. To keep this momentum going, we're continually investing in our business. We're working, for example, with the banks to improve settlement certainty for consumers and speed up the refinance process. We're exploring new technologies such as mobile signing so people have got more flexibility on where and how they sign. We're ensuring continuous greater digital enablement across jurisdictions. We're looking to do more transactions on our platform, and we're looking to expand across new jurisdictions, and we're having engagement with jurisdictions such as Tasmania. We'll continue to work with the government and the regulatory bodies on appropriate industry reform. Now on Slide 12, I'll talk a little bit about PEXA International. We are making good progress in the U.K.
The technology build is progressing well, and we've got our first lender signed up for our initial stages. In fact, payment integration testing with the Bank of England was completed alongside seven lenders, with the Bank of England committing additional testing slots for four more lenders in October 2022. PEXA is now the seventh net settlement payment systems cleared through the Bank of England. We've got agreements in place with Her Majesty's Land Registry, and we've got good engagement with the conveyancing industry generally. Further to that, we're relying on some key advisory board members with expertise in particular markets. We've got 100 Pexarians now working on the PEXA project, based in the U.K., Australia, and India. We expect to invest more than AUD 30 million of OpEx and CapEx in FY 2022 on the PEXA International expansion.
We're on track to go live with our commitment with a remortgage product in Q4 calendar year 2022. In fact, we had some good coverage recently from the U.K. Prime Minister about our expansion into the U.K. In our Insights business, on Slide 13, we're continually creating opportunities to create appropriate value for the PEXA access to real-time property data and insights to deliver efficient service. This year, we've delivered a number of PEXA Property and Mortgage Insights Reports providing unique insights in the property settlement mortgage market, which have been well received by numerous stakeholders such as media, banks, and our broader customer groups. We've also continued to develop and roll out our data insight services to ensure efficient and effective services in the use of the PEXA Exchange, services such as PEXA Tracker and PEXA Planner.
We're developing new services which are currently in concept, trials, and we look to expand those throughout the year. In addition to that, we're also looking forward to exploring and accelerating a number of joint development partnerships to bring richer insight services to market and positioning our operating model around data and insights to greater scalability and to ensure that we're appropriately taking forward a number of emerging opportunities. As part of this, I'm pleased today to announce PEXA Insights has made its first strategic investment in the exciting PropTech data company, Landchecker, and we've taken a 38% stake in this business. Now, on Slide 14, a couple of points around Landchecker.
Landchecker allows home buyers, developers, and renovators to make informed property decisions faster, informing consumers about planning restrictions, planning permit applications such as planned pending developments next door, planning restrictions such as heritage overlays, and approximate land size boundaries and dimensions. The investment in Landchecker enriches the unique and timely property data at PEXA, is appropriately looking to unlock for the benefit of consumers, government, and industry through new services. We aim to provide richer service offering to our customers, and we believe that the synergies between PEXA and Landchecker will enhance both our organizations in our service delivery. We expect to complete the Landchecker deal in late February 2022. Now, on Slide 15, a little bit about PX Ventures. We're excited that PX Ventures continues to progress and certainly leverage our first-mover advantage in the property sector tech market. Our PX Ventures are already active in the property ecosystem.
At present, we have a number of initial opportunities underway, including we've now launched a consumer app in partnership with another organization to improve the moving and transition experience for home buyers. It's called smoov. We've invested in products that are designed to improve the workflow for property developers and streamline the property journey for consumers and agents, respectively. We've also launched a new small business service for legal and conveyancing community to make business services better and more efficient, and that's through Business Advantage. We're providing consumers access to competitive home insurance product offerings through our investment with Honey. The exploration and implementation of these opportunities, among others, again, is being supported by a highly skilled advisory board with considerable digital data sector and international experience.
Our expectation is that both PEXA Insights and PX Ventures will enhance the PEXA Group service and allow us to appropriately grow, diversify, and extend further into the property tech, digital sector and support, most importantly, our customers, members, partners, shareholders, and the Australian economy. Now, just briefly, I just want to talk about the PEXA culture of trust and our investment in the community. Given the critical role played by PEXA in the economy, it's important for the group to continue building and maintaining a culture of trust in the community. In fact, we have one of the most trusted brands in the sector, and I can tell you, we don't take that for granted. We embrace our purpose of transforming the property experience for everyone and delivering through our values of “Innovate for Good”, “Better Together” and “Make It Happen, Make It Count .
We take all that seriously. During the first half of 2022, we set a new high watermark for trust, achieving a brand trust score of 8.9 out of 10, which is rated by our members. It's number one in the sector. Pleasingly, we're known for constant innovation and high-quality services, traits that we value greatly. In addition, we value our PEXA employees, and we're really pleased this year that we're named one of the best places to work in Australia, placing top three in the 2021 Best Places to Work Awards. During the first half of financial year 2022, we were also privileged to continue to have a highly engaged PEXA team, which translates directly to our customer experience.
We continue to invest in the community with active participation in Fitzroy Awards mentoring program and our shared value partnership with Homes for Homes and through our diversity and inclusion and our environmental sustainability initiatives. In fact, on a diversity inclusion lens, on one metric, our executive team is split 55%, 45% male, female, respectively, and we expect to continually do better in diversity and inclusion. As I get ready to hand over to Richard, I just want to mention a couple of things in terms of environmental and sustainability. Our PEXA people and our partners tell us that PEXA needs to keep investing in areas such as homelessness, ensuring that we improve the mental health of our people in the community just generally, and that we continually support environmental and sustainability. I can say that we are working on all these areas.
In fact, we recently received a five-star GRESB rating, which is up 8 points to 92 out of 100, which is an achievement which we're very proud of. Which is something that we're going to continue to invest in areas such as carbon neutrality, investment with Homes for Homes, and also ensuring that we continually work on safe and affordable housing. Lastly, during this half, PEXA has been recognized by numerous awards, and one example is our 2021 Ashton Media CX Awards for excellence in customer service. To wrap up, can I just say, when we talk about customer service, that's something that we rate very highly in the PEXA Group. I'll now hand over Richard, who will give our financial performance.
Thank you, Glenn. It is great to be here today to talk through such a strong set of financial results. Before I start, I should say that all the figures in this financial section reflect a pro forma P&L, and they're there to show the operating costs of PEXA as a listed company. What we do is we remove the one-off costs in the current financial year as a result of the listing, and we add back AUD 3.2 million of public company costs into the prior period to make sure it's comparable with the current cost base of the company as a listed entity. There is a bridge between the pro forma and statutory P&Ls in the appendix in Slide 31. On the results, PEXA delivered a very strong financial performance in the first half of 2022.
Revenue's up 46% to AUD 145 million. Operating costs are up just 19% year-on-year, and that's resulted in a PEXA Exchange EBITDA up 76% to AUD 83 million in the first half. EBITDA after the investment in the growth initiatives and one-offs, up 71% to AUD 75 million. Net profit after tax has gone from a AUD 4 million loss in the first half of last year to a AUD 26 million profit. Our net profit after tax, excluding the non-cash amortization of intangible assets or NPATA, is also up AUD 30 million to AUD 46 million. That's our view of a strong cash NPATA. What that means is that financial metrics are also strong, with our gross margin increasing by 1.6 percentage points to 87.6%.
Our EBITDA margin on the Exchange of 57%, up 10 percentage points from the first half last year. Overall, it's a really strong start to the financial year. Now I'll go into some of the key drivers of that financial result. On Slide 19, you can see revenue is a function of market size, market share, and price. As Glenn said, the total market grew very strongly in the first half, up 24% or to 2.5 million transactions or billable events. You can see that there's a chart in the appendix on Slide 29 that shows the total market. On top of that PEXA Exchange penetration or our market share grew 8 percentage points to 85%. On the top left-hand chart on Slide 19, you can see that by transaction type.
Transfer penetration grew from 78%– 84%. Refi penetration stable at 98%-99%, and other transaction types grew 16 percentage points to 71%. Combined that delivered an 8 percentage point increase to 85% overall. Adding that 8 percentage point increase to the 24% growth in the market means that the PEXA volumes grew 37% to 2.1 million, and you can see that in the top middle chart on this slide. We also saw an average price increase of AUD 4 to AUD 68 broken down as follows. We actually saw two CPI increases during the year because we held our FY 2020 prices through the first half of 2021 to assist members and the community during the early stages of COVID-19.
What that meant was that the FY 2021 price increase was implemented six months later on January 1, 2021, and the FY 2022 increase was implemented as normal on July 1, 2021. The average price of transfers increased by AUD 7 due to those two CPI increases and also the end of the discount, discounting campaign in Queensland in FY 2021 that was used to drive awareness and uptake. That discount ended on June 30, 2021. This, combined with a mix shift towards higher value transfers, meant the total average price increased by AUD 4 or 7%. Add that 7% to the 37% volume and you see a 46% increase in PEXA Exchange revenue.
You can see that on that right-hand chart from AUD 98.6 million in the first half 2021 to AUD 143.9 million in the first half of 2022. It's also worth noting that we did see a 44% growth in Exchange ancillary revenue, so that's the revenue not generated directly from these exchange transactions, and that grew to AUD 1.6 million in the first half. On Slide 20, we then look at gross margin and cost of sales. Our main cost of sales are lodgement support service fees. They are incurred when the workspace is set up, as it reaches out to the Land Registry to get bundled property information. It's charged in every workspace, whether it's a multi-party transfer, a two-party refi, or a single party discharge or other transactions.
That means when we do more transfers, the cost per transaction drops, which you can see in the top right-hand chart, down 6% to AUD 8.54. A higher mix of transfers also improves the revenue per transaction, as I've just been speaking on the previous slide, and you can see that on the top left-hand chart, up 7% to AUD 68.40. That combination means that our gross margin has improved to 87.6% and our gross profit has grown 49% to AUD 127.5 million. Slide 21 shows our operating expenses, and we group these into three categories, general administration, sales and marketing, and product design and development.
Our G&A costs, which cover our shared corporate teams, our board and exec REM, as well as prof fees and occupancy, increased by 15% in the first half of 2022, driven by corporate functions growing and to support continued expansion together with higher recruitment costs and the cost of our new long-term incentive plan. It's worth noting that the prior year was also understated due to COVID-19 impacts, and the first half 2022 spend is up just 5% from the first half of 2020, i.e., two years ago, which equates to a 2.5% annualized growth rate. Both prior period expenses include an additional AUD 3.2 million for costs incurred by PEXA as a public company, and that's done as a pro forma adjustment, so isn't in the statutory P&L.
Obviously, that allows for a more meaningful comparison to the first half of 2022. Our sales and marketing spend increased by just 3% in the first half of 2022 due to both this year and last being impacted by COVID-19. We were unable to host all of our regular practitioner events and also reduced our overall marketing spend. These costs dropped by approximately 20% from the first half of 2020, which was the last non-COVID-impacted year. Finally, our product development expenses increased by 26% in the first half due to higher hosting costs driven by higher exchange volumes and investment in data management capability. You'll also see from the bottom chart that we capitalized a similar amount of product development spend, so total cash spend on development was AUD 24 million or 16.6% of revenue in the period.
Slide 22 shows the benefits of scale flowing through the exchange. The chart on the left shows total costs as well as cost per transaction. The growth in volume combined with prudent cost control has resulted in a reduced cost per transaction, down from AUD 34 in the first half of 2021 to AUD 30 in the first half of 2022. That has resulted in a very strong growth in PEXA Exchange EBITDA, as you can see on the chart on the right, growing by 76% to AUD 83 million. We've also seen growth in our PEXA Exchange EBITDA margin, which has grown by 10 percentage points from 47%–57%. This is probably higher than our long-term expectations due to the high volumes in the first half.
In summary, from a P&L standpoint, H1, a very strong revenue and EBITDA growth, which has allowed us to upgrade our FY 2022 key prospectus forecast. The final finance slide on 23 shows our first half 2022 cash flow in a couple of ways. Chart on the left shows the movement in our cash balance over the year, and you can see it started with a balance of AUD 51 million of cash, generated AUD 83 million of EBITDA, spent AUD 22 million on capitalized product development, and had an AUD 8 million negative working capital movement. Excluding the impact of the IPO, we would have had approximately AUD 93 million of cash in the business at the end of the year.
As part of the IPO process, we paid offer cost of AUD 23 million, had AUD 6 million of negative working capital, and generated net IPO proceeds of AUD 15 million, resulting in an actual cash balance of AUD 78 million on the December 31. The table on the right side of 23 shows the pro forma cash flow, and you can see very strong free cash flow for financing tax of AUD 45 million, which equates to a 60% free cash flow conversion. Before I close, I should add there are more details of the financials in the appendix, but now I'll hand back to Glenn to run through our outlook and our guidance.
Thank you, Richard. I'm on Slide 25, so a couple of things just to add. The financial year 2021 momentum has continued into the first half of financial year 2022 with PEXA volumes up 37% on the same period last year. We achieved 60% of our full year FY 2022 volume forecast from the prospectus against an expectation of 52%. PEXA volumes remain positive into the second half of 2022, with January PEXA volumes ahead of last year. Having said that, we do expect that the year-on-year growth rates will slow in the second half, given the exceptional strength of the fourth quarter in financial year 2021 and uncertainty around potential interest rate increases.
With that in mind, we've upgraded our second-half volume forecast, with the midpoint of our guidance, assuming that PEXA Exchange volumes will be broadly in line with last year at approximately 1.8 million transactions. It's worth remembering that was a record second half performance for our business. This results in upgraded FY 2022 guidance, with our revenue expected to be between AUD 265 million and AUD 275 million compared to AUD 247 million in the prospectus. Our PEXA Exchange EBITDA expected to be between AUD 140 million and AUD 150 million, which is compared to AUD 126 million in the prospectus. We can also confirm that there'll be no interim dividend paid for the first half of 2022.
On Slide 26, in closing, overall, it's been a very successful half for the PEXA Group, with strong momentum across our business. PEXA's technology is relied upon by thousands of consumers, financial institutions, developers, lawyers and conveyancers nationally every day, and our commitment is to safeguard that experience, and it is something that is evident in everything we do. When you consider how fundamental property is to the economy, our role is significant. On that note, this property market remains buoyant, with strong refinance activity off the back of record low interest rates and speculation around rate rises. Internationally, PEXA U.K. is making good inroads. While there's still work to do, we are on track with the remortgage product later this calendar year. Likewise, PEXA Insights and PX Ventures are making progress via strategic investments and creation of new products and services to address market needs.
PEXA is committed to our community and to creating a sustainable future which are central to our culture and it's a culture that is rewarded through high Pexarian employee engagement and record trust levels across the industry, and we remain committed to both these. Off the back of these strong results, again, I'm pleased to once again confirm an upgrade to the PEXA Group's FY 2022 prospectus forecast. I just want to thank again all our PEXA members, customers, shareholders, and partners, and my PEXA colleagues and the team for the first half results. We're extremely grateful for the trust you provide us. I'll now hand over for any questions of Richard and myself. Thank you.
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 Josh Kannourakis from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Hi, Glenn and Richard. Thank you for taking my call. First question's just around the U.K. You've obviously given some good context around the progress in the banks. Can you give a little bit of extra color around the nature and context of those seven banks and also the ones that are potentially filling the four slots available later in this year, just with regard to their sizing potential percentage of the refi market or any other detail available?
No. Firstly, Josh, thanks for the question. Look, I can't really give too much flavor. It's due to some of the confidential elements and commercial nature in our discussions. What I can say, it's a range of organizations in the market. In terms of the four slots for October 2022, we're in discussion with a number of organizations in that market as well. What I can say is that we've got good engagement across the FIs and also the government regulatory bodies, and we are making good progress. In addition to that, we're engaging well with the broad conveyancing sector as well. We're also working through numerous other dimensions, such as our potential partners as well. Again, it's a moving feast.
Good engagement, good progress, but I can't give you any more flavor than that.
Understand. Maybe just around that, in terms of the competitive environment, obviously you guys have a first-to-market position, but, you know, are you aware of any others that have uploaded payment schemes that are looking at doing similar things within this recent testing slot that was required for the Real-Time Gross Settlement system?
No. The short answer on that one is no. We're not aware of anyone who's progressed as well as what we have with the Bank of England. In fact, we've got that 7 scheme, which is a good position to be in. There's always more work to do on that, but our testing has been good. We believe we're in a good position.
Fantastic. Second question just around the base business in Australia, perhaps for Richard. Into the second half and the expectations are given, can we get a little bit more context around the revenue mix expectations and just how we should also be thinking about the operating cost base into both the second half and on a go-forward basis for the Aussie Exchange?
Yeah, can do, Josh. I think the revenue mix, we're probably stabilizing now in terms of the mix between transfer, refi, and other. I think that mix is a reasonable assumption to carry through to the second half. We will see more share in Queensland, so we may see an ever- so- slight shift towards transfers, but it's no longer particularly material. In terms of the cost base, I'd expect costs in the second half to be a little bit higher than the first because we are continuing to recruit and bring new people into the business. That's why you'll see the guidance when it's there.
We've assumed broadly at a volume level that the midpoint of the guidance is roughly where we were in the second half of last year, which was obviously a record for PEXA, with slightly higher OpEx. That will explain the guidance as it moves down through revenue in a bit though.
Fantastic. In terms of, I guess, from a CapEx perspective, can we get a little bit of context about how you're thinking about investment across the various aspects of the business on a go-forward basis?
Yeah, absolutely. We've talked a little bit about some of the investments that we've made in the first half. You can see the CapEx that's in the chart. In terms of the total spend on CapEx across the growth initiatives, broadly speaking, that'll be somewhere around AUD 30 million, AUD 25 million–AUD 30 million in the full year. You'll see across the exchange, something similar in terms of total CapEx. Probably somewhere between AUD 55 million–AUD 60 million of CapEx for FY 2022, which is, you know, in terms of what we said in the prospectus a little bit more because we are investing a little bit more in both the U.K. and in the core Exchange.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Josh.
Your next question comes from Ed Henning from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my questions. I've got a couple. Firstly, just following on the U.K., can you just touch on when in 2023 that other slots will be available for the initial, you know, 7, sorry, 11 banks that have signed up beyond them for the first one?
Yeah. So there's Thanks, Ed, firstly, for the question. The first thing is we've got the 7 slots at the moment, and we've got another 4 slots in October 2022, and then we'll be in discussion with the Bank of England for the calendar year 2023. We've got 7 now, 4 in 2022, that's 11, and then we'll be in discussion in 2023 and 2024 for other potential slots.
One of the dimensions there, Ed, is that there's only a certain finite number that the Bank of England will give, and that's one of the areas of demand from financial institutions. If they miss out in these first areas, they may be at a competitive disadvantage.
Just on that, you know, if you think about the U.K. landscape, there's six major home lending institutions, and, you know, there's a decent tail running through there. Do you think you'll have enough slots to get at least, you know, the top 10 lenders through both this year and next year? How should we think about getting, you know, the larger part of the ecosystem through?
Well, Ed, that's a clever way of asking the question that Josh asked earlier. I think in reality, you know, we're working and discussing with a number of the banks. You know, the first thing is we want to make sure the platform's up and running, that we're actually doing transactions through. Then from that, you know, as many of the large ones as we can get on board, we'll aim to get on board and prove the system. We always factored in that we did not necessarily need to get all the large ones on in the early instances. If you think again, in reality in the Australian market, it took a number of years to get the institutions on the various jurisdictions and get the volume in. Again, 2023, we expect to get volume in.
2024 is actually to scale up even further with good revenue, particularly around the refi, remortgage. 2025 is around sale and purchase. It's a staggered rollout. This isn't easy, but importantly, we're on track with the development and delivery.
All right. And just one final one on that before I go on something else is, if you think about 2023, and it might be a little bit early for the slots, do you think, you know, you'll get some initial slots and then you could potentially can get some more throughout the year with the BoE? How should we think about the potential opportunity to get more banks on board?
Well, again, Ed, it's just a great point. Again, if you just think of it on a couple of lenses, the 7 that we're currently working with and another 4 later on in the year, which is the 11, that's quite a considerable amount of work just to lock them in, make sure the system works, making sure the transaction's all flowing through. There's a lot of change in the financial institutions as well as PEXA amongst others. That's the first thing to do. In terms of 2023 and 2024, using that is going to come down to a number of factors. One of those factors is what's the capacity of the Bank of England? They've got the RTGS upgrade. They'll have various constraints in terms of their system.
What we will be in, if this all goes according to plan, we'll be in a good first-mover advantage of having our platform up and financial institutions on, and those financial institutions and consumers and conveyancers benefiting from that service and system. That's going to be ongoing work, Ed.
Okay. No, that's great. Thanks for the color. Just moving on to costs. Can you just give us a feel of the increased D&A and also the increased costs as you need to ramp up engagement with conveyancers and other players in the U.K. as we look into 2023 and 2024?
Yeah. We've talked a little bit about the fact that we expect to spend AUD 100 million over FY 2022 to 2024 in order to bring this to life before we start generating sufficient revenue for the U.K. business to effectively pay for itself. I think that's a reasonable benchmark. We're going to spend just over AUD 30 million this year. We haven't locked down our forecast for next year, but I can imagine we'll spend a bit more next year. That will be across both OpEx and CapEx.
I think.
How do you think?
Oh, sorry.
No, just going to say.
I think one of the important things there is what Richard flagged, as we continually develop and explore the U.K. market and get our platform and engage with the various partners, we also see different dimensions happen, which therefore allows us to actually change how we're going to do our financials and our forecasts in future. In reality, we've already seen this with even the recent announcement from the U.K. Prime Minister saying that, you know, this is a bit of a flagship opportunity between Australia and U.K. All these things contribute to our forecast and future forward-looking dimensions.
Just Richard, going back to, you know, you talked about the investment of AUD 100 million, but thinking about what actually goes through the P&L as, you know, whether it's a D&A charge or whether it's increasing costs to the bottom line, how should we think about, you know, that versus what's capitalized and comes in over time?
Obviously what happens in the future is hard to talk about, but I can tell you in the first half, the AUD 12 million that we spent was about AUD 5 million of OpEx and about AUD 7 million of CapEx. I think in the full year, we talked about spending just over AUD 30 million. I would estimate sort of somewhere between AUD 11 million and AUD 14 million of that'll be expense, and the rest will be capitalized. That's probably a reasonable mix to think about because the OpEx is coming from the team that's on the ground. As you said, we're dealing with not just the financial institutions, but the conveyancing bodies as well. So there's a reasonable team there, which we'll ramp as we become operational. The CapEx is, you know, predominantly the technology build that's underway.
I think it will be a business that will be sort of 60% plus CapEx for a period of time. Within those broad numbers we spoke about, AUD 30 million this year, AUD 100 million over the next three, that's our current working hypothesis.
If you think about obviously the CapEx is to build the system, but the system comes online in end of calendar this year, so therefore your D&A starts to go up. How long are you going to amortize that over? Obviously, it's a long duration asset. Does that see a material tick up in the D&A or is it just steady?
Yeah, we amortize our Australian platform over 15 years. We haven't made a final call in the U.K. because we haven't built it yet. Obviously if it's 15, it'll take a while for that to ramp up to material levels. Somewhat depends on uptake before that decision is made.
Okay. No, that's good. Just one last question. You talked about the PEXA Exchange business for EBITDA margins currently tracking over your long-term expectations. Roughly, what are your long-term expectations for that EBITDA margin in Australia?
I think we've said we expect the exchange to operate in the 50-55 range. As I said, it's slightly ahead of that at 57 in the first half because we did have obviously a tremendous volume half. I would model it somewhere in that 50-55.
Okay. No, that's great. Thank you for your time.
Okay.
Your next question comes from Brendan Carrig from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Just a few questions from me. Maybe just starting on the volumes that you touched on, Glenn, for the current half. Of that 1.8 million, I think it's fair to say you've probably got a very high degree of clarity over what's happening for much of the current quarter, so to sort of, you know, four weeks out from now. In that 1.8, what's the kind of implied drop-off in volumes that you're expecting in the fourth quarter, given the clarity that you would have over much of the volumes that you're going to be achieving in the third quarter?
I'll take that one, Brendan. Yes, we do have clarity at the moment to sort of mid to late March. We've got a sense for the third quarter. It is still ahead of last year at this point in time. We're seeing obviously similar market volumes that REA spoke about in their presentation. We are seeing the third quarter being ahead. Fourth quarter last year was a big jump, and you can see that on our guidance slide, where it went from sort of 820,000 transactions to almost 1 million.
We are currently, if you take 1.8 as being the number that's the midpoint of our guidance, that would assume that the fourth quarter is down a little on last year. The guidance actually allows us between 1.7 and 1.9 million transactions. The fourth quarter is still a bit of an unknown for us at this point in time. We chose that as a midpoint, as a line in the sand, you know, based on where we are in this quarter and the fact that, you know, it was a strong period for us last year.
Okay. That's helpful. Just on the penetration numbers seem to be tracking well, but others seem to see quite a material spike up. Do you think that penetration increase in the other line can be sustained at that sort of 70% or thereabout, and will continue to trend higher? Or is there some sort of unique factors that drove that higher this period?
No, I think that's just the exchange getting more and more established within the ecosystem. Yes, it should be able to go up. There are always some products that we're continuing to digitize. I've got no reason to think that 71% will drop in the future.
There's opportunities obviously with the sector growth in Queensland. We're growing in ACT, small numbers, WA. There's transaction types, Brendan, that we haven't yet done, as well. There's still growth there.
Okay, excellent. Just a very quick clarification on inflation. Just to clarify, what's the timing of the data that you use for your inflation pricing reviews, and when do they flow through?
We get the March year-end inflation number and apply it from the first of July. We will know next year's price increase whenever that CPI number comes out, which I think is in late April.
Okay. Yeah, no, that's all. I just want to double-check. Just a final one from me. Just with the potential M&A from what your largest shareholder, can you provide. Not sort of speculating whether deals go ahead or not, but can you provide any color just around Dye & Durham and any discussions that you may have had separately with them, just given that their knowledge and expertise in the e-conveyancing space, not just in Australia, but they've also got some exposure obviously to Canada and the U.K. as well.
The first thing, we can't comment 'cause it's got nothing to do with us regarding their major shareholder in Dye & Durham, Brendan. In terms of discussions on markets just generally, again, you know, any commercial discussions we have with any organization is always quite sensitive. We talk with all different players in U.K., Australia, et cetera, in terms of what's going on in the marketplace just generally. I can't really say any more than that.
Okay. That's fine. I might leave it there then. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thanks, Brendan.
Next question comes from Scott Russell from UBS. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning, Glenn and Richard. I've got a few questions. I was just going to pick up on the Dye & Durham point. I hear you that there are commercial issues there, but I guess the deal with Link creates an interesting dynamic for PEXA, because they have aspirations in the U.K. and Canada, of course. Perhaps you can comment on what it means for your Canada aspirations. I think previously you were willing to look at Canada over a multi-year time horizon. Does this fast-track some plans there?
Again, Scott, look, I couldn't really. It'd be just purely speculative talking about dynamics, because that's something outside my control, not appropriate. I think that what I can say is that, you know, the U.K. market, we're progressing, as I said, according to plan, and we are doing the analysis and exploring other opportunities. Again, they would have to be firstly consistent with our strategy and going to add value. Secondly, that we can execute on them appropriately. Thirdly, we know what the market dynamics are. There are numerous dimensions on all those. But any more than that would be just purely speculative. What I can also though add is in any ownership model, there's always service agreements, shareholder agreements in place, which there is at the moment.
You know, a lot of that would be status quo.
Okay. All right. Understood. Can I ask you a question about the Landchecker acquisition? You haven't disclosed the dollars that you've invested into this deal. I'm not sure if you can give us a ballpark of its materiality, the consideration. Just be interested in how you determined the 38% stake size and how you plan to monetize this. What sort of time horizon?
Let me just maybe talk about a couple aspects and then Richard will just pick it a little bit up in regards to the investment. What I can also just say on the investment, we have mentioned obviously the stake we've taken, and that's the 38% and obviously RACV for 51%. The residual is with the founders. That's the first thing just to mention. In terms of the dollar element, Richard will pick an element of that. There are some commercial sensitivities, and that's one of the reasons why we've been a little bit softer in terms of providing the number, but we'll answer in a second. Let's talk about the commercialities of it. There's probably a couple of dimensions there. It's a really interesting business.
It's already got a customer base of around about 60,000. It's got recurring revenue coming in, both in terms of one-off and subscription. It's also providing unique insights, as I mentioned, around planning, permits, heritage, that is quite attractive to, you know, I mentioned one segment being property developers. We believe that PEXA, Landchecker and RACV coming together can not only further enhance services to customer segments such as property developers and others, but also build broader areas of monetization, both in terms of insight and data services. In addition to that, providing services that can really help consumers, conveyancers and others in making their decision at near real time.
What we flagged on that is that when we give our perspectives, we illustrate that we believe the total addressable market based on Frost & Sullivan in data insights was around AUD 400 million. What we're starting to unpack is that the market is rapidly changing around data and insights in terms of open data, new data services and also services that can be used across numerous segments that we probably hadn't really ascertained to the degree that we are now starting to see. In terms of the monetization opportunity, we really only see upside in that opportunity. We see this as a start of sort of broader growth opportunities around data insights generally.
You'll hear more. We expect in the full year, you'll hear more about where we're progressing in this broader data insights business. Richard, you just want to touch on the number?
Yeah. We haven't completed yet. There's a couple of steps we need to do so. We don't really want to go out with a specific number, but it's just under AUD 10 million is the investment to get the 38%.
Okay, I'll leave it there. Thanks, gents.
The next question comes from Angie Ellis from 8020 Invest. Please go ahead.
Yes.
With the PX Ventures, you know I'm always sort of interested in what's going on with that. I just wondered whether you're still offering the scholarships in this new year for the entrepreneur development program and whether, you know, just generally what's happening with PX Ventures and whether you're going to expand that into the U.K. and possibly Canada as well.
Look, it's a great question, Angie. A couple of things. We're predominantly focusing PX Ventures and PEXA Insights. I'll talk on PX Ventures on the Australian domestic market first because we want to we believe it's firstly considerable opportunity in this domestic market. Then secondly, we're seeing some very unique opportunities for us to add value. That's the first thing. What we have done in the domestic market with PX Ventures, we've you know got our Launchpad service up and running where we've got. We've had about 100 investment opportunities run through Launchpad. We've identified a number that we're currently testing or exploring. I mentioned a couple that are in the marketplace at the moment. We expect to you know progress a couple more in the second half.
What we're also doing, coming back to your point about scholarships and other type of partnerships, we are exploring other type of lateral opportunities with partners. If I give you an example, slightly outside of PX Ventures, but illustrates it with PEXA Insights. We announced our partnership with the Melbourne Business School's Centre for Business Analytics about a month ago. What that aims to do is to ensure not only do we get access to unique data scientist skills, but we can also provide potential opportunities for postgraduates and graduates to work in the PEXA organization just generally. We expect to continue to pursue those type of partnerships not only in the second half of this year, but ongoing throughout. That's probably the best illustration I can give you at this stage.
We see, you know, they're both new businesses, but we see potential good growth opportunities just generally in both those businesses.
Yeah. Well, that's fantastic. A friend of mine actually runs that Centre for Business Analytics, and I go to the annual conference, so I'll have to check it out if you're doing any presentations there. With the scholarships, will you still be offering them in this new year? You're still sort of doing that 50-50 split for sort of start-ups to do that program? Is that still going?
Yeah. We're definitely currently doing some further evaluation in the second half. In fact, our Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Scott Butterworth, will be having a look at some of these in the second half as well. Yep, I would expect you'll hear more about that throughout the year.
Yep. Thanks, guys. Well done.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Stewart Oldfield from Field Research. Please go ahead.
Good day, gentlemen. Just a bit surprised there's been no questions about the timetable for interoperability. Obviously you're saying you're committed to an appropriate industry reform. There was a report pre-Christmas that you'd dropped out of the multi-party meetings on interoperability. Is that still the case?
No. Well, firstly, Stuart, thanks for the question. Now, a couple of things on it. We're still actively engaged with various government bodies and ARNECC on the industry reform. So that's continuing on. What we've said is actually we can't continue to do some more technical design work until we get some of the things worked through on some of the legislation elements. So for example, timeframes, the economics, ensuring that we've got some good independent validation that this is going to work from a cyber perspective. You know, being a trusted organization in this sector with, you know, 10,000 customers, for example, lawyers and conveyancers, you just can't rush these things, you know, being involved in banking and government for numerous years. So it's important to get it right.
What we've said to the government bodies, including ARNECC, you know, we've got more work collectively to do before we can just keep trying to rush a bit of APIs in and integrating. You can't jeopardize someone's home for some rushed elements. We're still working through, but we believe there's some higher priorities that we're asking ARNECC to work on. In fact, what I can say, Stuart, on that, the Institute of Conveyancers and the Law Society and other bodies such as ABA, they're also raising some flags with the things that we work on together before we rush legislation or technical changes as well.
Got it. I'm always interested in that sort of interplay between you being the incumbent in Australia, but rolling out a platform in the U.K. Do you get a sense that the regulators between the two countries are talking to each other and that there is you know a danger that if you're seen as playing hardball in Australia it might impact your ambitions in other jurisdictions?
Well, Stuart, that's a great question as well. I think a couple of things that I would just add. The market is different obviously in the U.K., so you don't have an equivalent regulator in the U.K. You have different bodies such as the Bank of England over there, which is equivalent obviously to the RBA. In saying that, one of the things that we've done in the domestic market is proven that we've got a platform that's up and running, a strong relationship, and we deliver consistently for, you know, all stakeholders. That's the first thing I'd just mention. The second thing is we're not playing hardball. We're playing very clear that we're representing something that's taken 10 years to get up and running, and we're critical infrastructure in the sector.
We're open to competition. In fact, there is competition, you know, in reality, but you've got to get it right. If you just take the ASX and Chi-X, did not introduce interoperability in that market because it's too complex. Here we're talking about selling you know, AUD 1 million home, for you know, AUD 100 transaction fee via PEXA. Let's not jeopardize that, by rushing in something that is going to cause some challenges. We're not playing hardball. We've got responsibilities, and we take them seriously.
That concludes our question and answer session and our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
Thank you.