Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the PEXA full year results announcement. 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 via the phones, 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 CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on our FY 2024 full year earnings call update. I'm Glenn King, PEXA's Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, and with me this morning is our Group Chief Financial Officer, Scott Butterworth. Turning to slide two. Before I begin, in the spirit of reconciliation, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea, and community. We pay our respects to their elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples here today. Turning to slide three. Today's briefing will begin with an overview of PEXA's FY 2024 performance. I will also touch on how we delivered these results and the work over the year to deliver against our priorities.
Scott will then walk you through the detailed operational performance and financial results for the group. I'll come back to you and provide a perspective on the new financial year. We will then be happy to take your questions. Turning to slide four. The momentum in the business in terms of financial performance highlights can be seen on this page. For example, group revenue, group operating EBITDA, and free cash flow all made positive gains, delivered by revenue growth, cost and CapEx management, and operational improvements. Non-exchange revenue has improved and now represents 15% of total business revenues, highlighting the growth of our new revenue streams with the PEXA Group, which were non-existent at the time of the IPO in 2021.
At a group level, our operating margin was 36.5% against guidance of greater than 35%, a 1.7 percentage points higher than the prior year on a like-for-like basis. The exchange continues to be the foundation of the business, with improved revenues and margin, which at 54.5%, is up almost 1 percentage point on the prior year. Overall, NPAT was AUD 21 million, increased by 22%, and this was driven by a combination of factors, including higher revenue, improved margins, combined with controlled cost growth. Turning to slide five . Let me summarize our strategic position today. The exchange business continues to demonstrate its strength and prominent position as a digital infrastructure asset. Its resilience, national coverage, and financial performance are testament to this. Digital Solutions, which was previously Digital Growth, brought Value Australia to market to complement the other businesses.
We now have a suite of bundled and unbundled solutions to support our customers. This business also achieved operating EBITDA break-even for the month of June, as forecast. International. The build of the platform in modular form for multiple markets remains on schedule, with our estimate that up to 85% of the platform build is reusable in multiple jurisdictions. This year, we also successfully integrated the platform into Optima Legal, and following the NatWest announcement, the momentum with meaningful discussions with lenders has accelerated. We currently have additional lenders, including Tier 1 lenders, requesting to participate in the Bank of England PEXA testing slots. All these activities are underpinned by approved efficiencies and by the capabilities that we continue to invest across PEXA: our people, technology, and ESG. We continue to be well-placed to deliver, given our business momentum and our sound financial position. Turning to slide six.
Across all our brands and segments, we have a broad, interconnected customer base of government, financial institutions, lawyers, conveyancers, and developers. In Australia, we support approximately 160 financial institutions, more than 10,000 conveyancing and legal practitioners, more than 70 property developers, and 300 and 45 local councils. And in the U.K., we provide services to approximately 18 financial institutions, including seven out of the eight largest institutions and more than 2,000 conveyancers. Turning to slide seven. Our consistent goal and strategy is to deepen our customer service and deliver long-term sustainable value in line with our purpose of connecting people to place. To do this in Australia, we support our customers by enhancing our exchange to maintain Australia's leading electronic lodgement platform.
We have further extended our relationships with existing customers with property insights and other digital solutions that use our distribution and data capability. And internationally, we are expanding, utilizing our intellectual property to solve customer problems in markets with Australia-like land title systems, starting with the U.K. Now turning to slide eight. In financial year 2024, we brought together the PEXA Exchange and the digital solutions business under a single Australian leadership structure. And in the year, the exchange platform maintained and strengthened its position. Transaction volumes grew, as did our market penetration. Customer satisfaction and platform uptime remained at 90% and 100% respectively. Importantly, we rolled out more APIs to our FI customers and PMS providers, contributing to improved service. All these positive outcomes supported our improved exchange margin.
Overall, the exchange in FY 2024 had a solid year, despite stubborn inflation and relatively high interest rates presenting challenging conditions. Now, despite a modest overall contribution and below our expectation, Digital Solutions remains strategically important and is growing. It provides a foundation to build non-regulated revenues as the economy improves, when the rate outlook restores investor confidence, and Digital Solutions also delivered break-even operating EBITDA for the month of June, as forecast, due to our focus on financial management. Now turning to slide nine. There has been significant commentary around interoperability, and it is important to note interoperability requires multiple participants, such as banks, land title offices, revenue offices, and so on. It is complex, with questionable consumer benefits. Now, PEXA was formed out of a public-private partnership.
It is a successful COAG initiative which materially transformed property transactions, delivering continued and ongoing material benefits to all stakeholders, and also material value to Australian taxpayers. The PEXA Exchange platform contributes approximately AUD 300 million per annum savings to industry, while the cost to consumers is as little as 0.01% on an average property transaction. I think this point is absolutely critical, given that we are heavily price regulated, but have been able to demonstrate 90% customer satisfaction and on day, on day settlement for major banks at over 80%. PEXA has continued to invest heavily to ensure innovation and improvements for customers, and we should note that there are also numerous other regulatory priorities supported by PEXA, such as the Tasmanian and Northern Territory e-conveyancing rollout. We will continue to work actively with the regulators on well-thought-through, customer-led reform.
Turning to slide 10. Over the last year, U.K. market activity was challenging, which was depicted by lower mortgage volumes, and this did impact our business, including Optima, Smoove, and delivery against our FY 2024 targets. However, green shoots are emerging, and we are seeing conditions improving. We do remain confident of our U.K. aspirations due to our unique position, our platform progress, size of the market, consumer needs, government policy, and now our distribution network. Let me touch on the points as referenced on the slide. Firstly, our PEXA platform is established, unique, and tracking well. We have had several FIs complete testing with PEXA Pay, including two of the top 10 lenders, and we continued to progress both onto our platform. Also note, those that have PEXA Pay tested represent approximately 20% of the U.K. mortgage flow.
Since NatWest, there is growing interest, momentum, active discussions, and engagement with lenders, including the majors. It is clear that FIs want to explore and test the benefits of PEXA. It's important to note that onboarding, though, takes time, as it includes Bank of England providing testing slots, and those slots are limited. PEXA is working constructively with the Bank of England and FIs to streamline this where possible. Secondly, the strength of our technology and PEXA U.K. platform progress is demonstrated by Shawbrook Bank's successful completion of a market-leading remortgage transaction within 36 hours, and the PEXA platform delivery is progressing with our U.K. sale and purchase build underway. Thirdly, the acquisition of Optima Legal and Smoove provides us with distribution scale in terms of FI and conveyancing customers and mortgage processing flow.
During the year, we completed the integration of Optima Legal into the PEXA Tech and are also now working towards the conversion of the customer base onto the PEXA platform. Turning to slide 11. From FY 2020 to FY 2024, we have spent approximately AUD 127 million on our international platform. A platform which we believe is unique in its modular design and potential reusability for multiple international markets. In fact, our expectation is that 85% of the platform is reusable in different markets. We also anticipate that the U.K. platform tech spend will reduce over the future years. Now, turning to slide 12. I wanted to highlight our focus on our sustainable business. For example, we made positive steps towards operational efficiencies....
Gender parity within our leadership group, strong reputation with our stakeholders and community at large, as well as our continued focus on sound ESG practices. You can see more of our work with today's publication of our inaugural ESG report. This details our ongoing partnerships with organizations such as Homes for Homes, our work on policy reform in areas of housing affordability, and our continued maturity in our ESG governance practices. I will now hand over to Scott to walk you through the financials in more detail.
Thank you, Glenn. As Glenn indicated, I will now spend some time taking you through the group's financial performance over the past year. In general, we've taken a good step forward with our results this year, reflecting our focus and discipline. Before starting, could I please ask you to turn to slide 14? As the slide shows, this section is presented on a pro forma basis unless otherwise stated. To assist with comparability between periods, the pro forma analysis contains the full FY 2023 and FY 2024 effects of the operating businesses acquired during that period. As published information for our business is contained in the appendices to this pack. I turn now to slide 15, which sets out PEXA's overall financial performance for the year.
Revenues increased by 10% on a pro forma basis, reflecting growth in the exchange, Digital Solutions and Smoove, offset by lower revenues in Optima Legal. Operating expenses were well controlled, growing by only 4% on a pro forma basis. This was the net result of the benefits of our productivity enhancement program, offset by the effects of capability investments and underlying cost inflation. Pro forma operating EBITDA increased by 22%, and EBITDA grew by 15%, with the difference relating to specified items which grew during the year, as will be discussed in a few moments. Reflecting the positive revenue and expense draws experienced by the group, our operating EBITDA margin expanded by about 300 basis points during the year.
CapEx was broadly flat at around AUD 69 million, with spend on regulatory matters, API building and integration activities being offset by lower spend on customer enhancements. Given this profile, operating cash flow yield increased by 4 percentage points during the year. Turning now to slide 16, I want to spend a few moments on the various line items below operating EBITDA. Firstly, specified items increased by about AUD 9 million during the year. Restructuring costs were up about AUD 10 million to AUD 11 million, driven by redundancy costs of around AUD 7 million and non-cash impairments of around AUD 4 million. This increase was partially offset by a net AUD 3 million reduction in other costs, mostly associated with professional services fees. Secondly, depreciation and amortization costs increased by about AUD 13 million.
This was due to the carry forward effect of assets constructed in the current and previous periods and the amortization of assets obtained through our recent acquisitions. Slide 40 provides more information on the drivers of amortization during the year. Thirdly, net finance charges fell by about AUD 0.4 million during the period, despite an increase in average debt. This was due to higher group and source account balances and a higher earning rate on these balances. Lastly, income tax expense fell by about AUD 9 million during the period. This is largely due to the non-recurrence of the tax credit write-off that we experienced in FY 2023. However, you will note that our effective tax rate remains high.
This is because of the tax expense attributable to our profitable operations in Australia and the losses incurred in the U.K., which out of conservatism, we only partly tax affected. I will now review the performance of our underlying businesses, starting with slide 17 and the exchange. As you can see from the slide, we've experienced a modest around 70 basis points increase in market level transactions during FY 2024 relative to FY 2023. However, PEXA volumes increased by 1.6% over the period, reflecting an increase of about one percentage point in our market penetration. The increased volumes were skewed to the more profitable transfer segment, with our refi mix falling by around 300 basis points in the period.
Having said that, as shown on slide 18, there has been some unevenness in transfer volume activity across our various jurisdictions, reflecting the individual economic circumstances of each of them. Overall, national PEXA transfer volumes reached the previous peak of first quarter 2022 levels during the first quarter of 2024, and this was led by growth in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth and in the Queensland regions, offset by slower growth in Melbourne and regional Victoria and in South Australia. Turning now to slide nineteen, these market and other dynamics have had a favorable impact on our economics. Exchange revenues increased 11%, mainly due to CPI-linked repricing at the beginning of the year and improved transaction mix, with smaller effects from market growth and improved coverage.
Expenses grew by 9%, reflecting inflation and the cost of investing in capabilities such as risk management, sales and support for our customers, and data management. These were offset by one-off cost improvements and ongoing efficiency benefits, as well as the effects of capitalization. Overall, operating EBITDA increased by 13% and EBITDA rose by 12%. Specified items for the exchange mainly reflected restructuring costs. CapEx was relatively flat, with increased regulatory spend, including on the interoperability program and on our API suite, being offset by lower spend on customer enhancements and support, including running down the spend associated with our salesforce implementation project, which occurred in FY 2023.
The effect of these movements was that the exchange's operating EBITDA margin increased to 54.5%, an increase of about 80 basis points, and its operating cash flow yield increased by around 220 basis points to reach 41.6%. I'll now turn to the performance of Digital Solutions, starting with slide 20. Overall, the year saw good improvements in customer demand for Digital Solutions products. Particularly pleasingly, our product proposal pipeline grew, and its subscription win rate was generally solid. We also saw a good uplift in new business sales across our product portfolio, while subscription churn was well managed. As a result, we saw improved revenues across the period, underpinned by a growth in subscription revenue alongside growing levels of project activity.
To put this in a business context, it benefited from record revenues during the period, and Value Australia made its inaugural sales, including to major banks. Lendings are also settled well into the portfolio, making its first-ever financial institution sale, and we continued to support demand for transaction solutions such as workflow and FX products. Slide 21 sets out the economics of Digital Solutions. As you can see, pro forma revenues grew by 8%, even after absorbing the non-recurrence of a large one-off transaction fee that we received in FY 2023. Notwithstanding the positive momentum during the year, we had been targeting a higher revenue outcome for this business. However, to offset this shortfall in our expectations, we did take steps to achieve half-on-half reductions in the business's operating costs, which fell by AUD 7 million in total over the period.
The cost reduction reflects four factors: First, professional fees fell, reflecting the end of the various market entry studies that we performed in FY 2023. Second, we managed our discretionary expenditures more tightly. Third, we benefited from our productivity enhancement program, particularly with respect to removing overheads and duplication. Fourthly, we were able to benefit from the investments made in group-wide infrastructure, such as data management. Overall, this means that we have been able to break even in the business at the operating EBITDA line as we exited June 2024, and the business's operating loss narrowed by AUD 4.6 million in the second half. You will note that specified items did step up during the period. This reflected a modest increase in earn-out costs and primarily the cost of restructuring the business and the non-cash cost of impairing some of the business's initial in-house built products.
We've also started stepping down our CapEx, particularly in second half 2024, albeit there is still some work to do in FY 2025 on building out Value Australia's capabilities. The effect of these changes is that the business' operating EBITDA margin and operating cash flow yield improved during the year, particularly in the second half. In other matters, we've previously guided to a revenue target of AUD 50 million for digital solutions. This was based on organic and inorganic activity. As previously said, and in line with our capital management framework, we are not currently planning any material acquisitions for this business. As a result, rather than focusing on a revenue target, management's objective is to drive appropriate returns from our existing portfolio of assets and achieve value-creating, capital-efficient pathways towards scale. The effect of this is that we are withdrawing the previous guidance provided for digital solutions.
I will now turn to slide 22, which provides a snapshot of market activity in the U.K. As you can see, market remortgage volumes have remained at below trend levels as U.K. consumers have adopted a wait and see attitude to the Bank of England's rate cycle. There has also been somewhat of a trend away from fees assisted remortgages of the type performed by Optima Legal towards cashback offers. Sale and purchase volumes have been impacted by similar interest rate issues, as well as the short recession that occurred in the September and December quarters of 2023. However, we did see a pickup in housing market activity during the June 2024 quarter. As additional context for the performance of international, slide 23 describes the movements in the PEXA platform sales pipeline in the U.K.
As Glenn stated, we announced on May 2 that we are working with NatWest and another large lender in the U.K., and our work with them remains ongoing. Additionally, we have gained agreement from two large banks and four smaller ones to conduct Bank of England testing of the payment flows associated with our platform. Further activity also includes working with an additional two smaller institutions to bring them onto our platform. Finally, PEXA remains focused on working towards our ambition of achieving 25% to 40% Remo market share and 25% sale and purchase market share. There is momentum and engagement with lenders. Building on this, our desire and focus is to work towards achieving these market share goals on a run rate basis by the end of calendar 2025 for Remo and 2027 calendar for sale and purchase.
However, because of external factors beyond PEXA's control, the timing of when these market share aspirations may be achieved is inherently uncertain. We note that management and board continue to heavily scrutinize our progress in the U.K. and the expenditures that we are incurring in respect to the market. A further update will be provided at our first half 2025 result. I turn now to slide 24, which sets out the results for international. Pro forma revenues were relatively flat over the period. We saw a 16% pro forma increase in Smoove revenues, largely due to improved sale and purchase volumes, repricing during the period, and improved search revenues. However, this was offset by lower Optima Legal revenue, mainly due to lower market activity and lower average market share than in FY 2023. Albeit, there was improvement in this latter metric during the year.
Operating expenses did step up during the period by 9%. This was mainly due to the investments we made in PEXA U.K., as we increased our platform development and commercialization activities. Costs in Smoove were flat, with the impact of staff reductions offsetting cost inflation. Optima Legal costs were also flat, with the benefits of the capacity release made in first half 2024 being offset by the cost of improving the business' employee proposition and normalizing bonus arrangements. We also saw specified items increased by AUD 3.3 million during the period, mainly due to the cost of integrating Optima Legal and restructuring activities. CapEx was relatively flat, with increased sale and purchase development and integration costs offsetting lower spend on building our remortgage proposition.
Overall, operating cash outflows increased by AUD 8.8 million over the period, mainly due to increased PEXA UK operating costs and Optima Legal losses. I now want to return to group matters and discuss our cash flows and balance sheet shape as set out on slide 25. As you can see, the effect of our improved profitability, together with improved working capital management and flat CapEx, has led to an increase in cash flow conversion and consequently, free cash flow. Overall, free cash flow increased by about 175% to reach AUD 38.5 million for the year, and we ended the period with a cash balance of AUD 90.5 million after paying down about AUD 10 million of debt in the second half. Slide 26 sets out further matters relating to our balance sheet.
Firstly, as you can see, we reshaped our debt facility during the period, replacing our previous arrangements with a longer tenor, more flexible and larger facility. Secondly, we have also benefited from an increase in average cash balances associated with our own group cash balances and our third-party source account to about AUD 380 million, and an earning rate that has improved by 150 basis points over the period. Turning now to slide 27. Our improved earnings and relatively flat net debt has meant that we have continued to see a trend of balance sheet de-leveraging that started in the first half of 2024. Importantly, our net debt to operating EBITDA ratio improved by point three turns during the year.
We did see a decline in the times interest cover ratio on a gross basis from 7 times in FY 2023 to 5.4 times in FY 2024. However, adjusting for the effects of interest income from our own balances and the source account, this ratio does remain at comfortable levels, with an adjusted ratio of 18.8 x, up from 15 times in the previous year. Much of the improved performance of the business has been underpinned by the results of our productivity enhancement program, which are set out on slide 28. Overall, our work on improved operating model design, better ways of working in technology, capacity release in the UK, and better non-labor expense disciplines, has allowed us to generate cash, that is to say, OpEx and CapEx savings, with an annual run rate benefit of about AUD 16 million.
These have been used to fund the investments in the business and deal with headwinds associated with foreign exchange, particularly in relation to operating expenses. In closing, our financial performance improved sharply over the year, whilst we've also improved our strategic position. Given that, I would like to turn to slide 29. Our framework. Glenn, my colleagues and I, are very cognizant of the need to manage shareholder capital wisely to create sustainable long-run returns for all shareholders. Our framework for achieving this is set out on this slide. As you can see, we have met the targets we set ourselves for FY 2024. However, as Glenn will discuss, we remain focused on delivering additional capital efficiencies in FY twenty-five, including finding appropriate capital-light mechanisms to support growth, provided they create value for all shareholders.
I'll now pass over to Glenn, who will provide some closing perspectives, including our views on the outlook for FY 2025.
Thanks, Scott. As illustrated on slide 31, we believe the economy still has areas of weakness, although we see growth slowly improving both here in Australia and the U.K. For example, there are positive economic fundamentals in Australia, including population growth, housing demand, and specific government policies supporting housing. Given this, we remain focused on sustainable growth and on the drivers of our business that we can manage. Turning to slide 32. Our priorities for FY 2025 are all extensions of our strategy. In Australia, we will continue to focus on increasing our Exchange national coverage and enhancing our service to meet the needs of our customers, including greater product reach. We will support regulatory matters while developing innovative ways to meet our customer needs.
In the UK, we will continue to build out our international platform and deploy our purchase capability and integrate our Optima Legal, Smoove, and PEXA service. We aim to progress the onboarding of lenders, and this will be done against a backdrop of reducing our cash spend in the U.K. and improving the overall UK financial performance. At the group level, we will continue to build our capability that supports all areas of our business, such as ensuring platform security and resilience across all markets, developing talent to grow our business, performance efficiencies, and ensuring capital finds its way to the most productive activities across the group. Turning to slide 33. This slide summarizes our roadmap in the U.K. and the streams of work underway during FY 2025.
Scott has already touched on the platform build over the next few months, after which we expect to have sale and purchase and material remo capability in the U.K. market. In tandem with the platform rollout is the onboarding of customers. This is not just a lender base, but also conveyancers. Now, turning to slide 34. Our FY 2025 guidance is covered on this slide. I'd like to highlight that inclusive of Smoove, we expect an increase in group revenue of between 13% to 19%, group margin greater than 34% compared to 31% for the prior year. Net interest expense broadly aligned to this year's experience, and cash outflow in our international operations to fall to a range of AUD 55 to AUD 58 million. The group's effective tax rate is expected to remain elevated in FY 2025.
This reflects the tax expense incurred in respect of our Australian operations and our conservative approach to tax affecting losses in the U.K. This view assumes that relevant tax laws and regulations, policy approaches as expressed in tax rulings and guidance notes, and our own business mix, taxation procedures and judgments remain consistent across periods. Now, turning to slide 35. In closing, we have made progress on our strategy and execution, improved our financial performance across our group, and remained focused on disciplined and sustainable growth. We have a clear focus on FY 2025 priorities and performance expectations to ensure we are well positioned for the future. With that, you would have seen my early announcement today of my intention to retire as Group MD and CEO of the PEXA Group by the end of FY 2025, after an incredible five years.
I've been extremely humbled and proud to lead this unique Australian-owned organization, building on the legacy of the foundation set back in 2010 through the IPO in 2021, the entry into the U.K., the continued national coverage of our secure property exchange, and diversifying our value proposition to our dedicated and loyal customers. I look forward to continuing to lead the organization to deliver on our strategy as we facilitate an orderly and smooth transition as part of the group board's succession planning framework. I want to acknowledge the wonderful support I've received from the chair, Mark Joiner, our highly engaged and experienced directors, and my colleagues on the executive, past and present, and including particularly Scott. Importantly, thank you to our shareholders and our fantastic team, who I've been proud to work with and who I will continue to work with over the coming year.
We have a wonderful purpose, which drives excellence in our collective pursuit to connect people to place. With that, Scott and I are happy to take your questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question via the phones, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from Elizabeth Miliatis from Jarden. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. Just the first one on the U.K. market share targets. You have noted there, you've reiterated your targets, but it sort of sounds, you know, you're flagging that there might be a bit of a miss, potentially just given market forces which aren't in your control. Are you able to sort of give a bit more color on that? Are you very convinced that you'll hit those targets? Or, yeah, just why sort of that sort of step back slightly in terms of your messaging there. Thank you.
Thanks, Elizabeth, and welcome back from your leave. Appreciate your question. I think there's a couple of things here. Glenn set out on the FY 2025 slide for the U.K., those matters that we control directly, and we are going very, very hard at achieving those milestones. There's also a set of things that we influence, but we don't control, and the biggest of those is the rate at which large banks, in particular, sign on to contracts. So we control the sales process, and we're working very, very hard on that sales process, but we don't completely control when a bank will respond to every part of that sales process. So instead of providing a definitive date.
What we've decided to do is provide, here are the dates we're gonna push very, very hard towards, but also let people know that there is aspects of this process that we can't control and don't actually directly influence, and therefore, there is some uncertainty about when those dates might be hit. But you shouldn't read that as management stepping away from working very, very hard to achieve these outcomes.
Elizabeth, it's Glenn. Now, the thing I would add to Scott's point on the control aspect, we delivered on the PEXA integration into Optima Legal as we expected and targeted by May this year. So we controlled that. That has certainly allowed us to enable customers who use the Optima Legal to come onto the PEXA Tech if they've tested with the PEXA Tech. NatWest and that other major are customers of Optima Legal and have tested with the PEXA Tech, and we are progressing with that. What I can also say is that the interest has progressed in a positive way.
And what I can also say is that the momentum is progressing also positive, and we'll be able to give a more fulsome update on our progress at the half-year results.
Maybe just to finalize, a bit of that response there, Elizabeth. There isn't an endless piece of capital string here. So ourselves as management and the board in particular, scrutinize very heavily our expenditure in the U.K. and want to see continued progress in a sensible way towards these sorts of objectives. Now, clearly, we're not gonna keep throwing capital into a solution if we don't think we're gonna get to where we want to achieve it.
Yep.
But that remains an ongoing set of scrutiny across the company.
Okay, got it. And then just around just some of the smaller businesses that you've acquired, so like Smoove, Optima, and also the digital business. Can you give us color in terms of path to profitability at an EBITDA level? Is that something we should expect in 2025 or beyond? I think obviously digital broke even in the month of June, but yeah, just a bit of color around how we should sort of forecast those bits, because they can move the needle quite materially.
Yeah, sure. Maybe I'll start off with Digital Solutions, Elizabeth. You saw we had a good last month of the year, and in fact, you'll see in the appendix, we provide a monthly view of the EBITDA or operating EBITDA for that business. And in fact, the positive variance that we saw in the last month was actually due to revenue, not to cost. That gives us a good sense of that the business is on the right footing. Its primary goal over the course of this year is to make sure it's making as good a use of our own distribution channels as is possible. And you would have seen from the customer slide that Glenn went through, that when our distribution channels are working, they work very well.
Our job is to make sure that they're working effectively all of the time, so we think that business should continue on a profit trajectory in 2025. Maybe not a substantial profit trajectory, 'cause there's still a bit of growth investment to be done, but we're not expecting that business to lose money, and there is a bit of CapEx to be done as well. On U.K., first of all, with Smoove, that business is traveling ahead of where we had expected it to be, and we've been pleasantly surprised by the operating leverage in that business to the sale and purchase market.
And so if that sale and purchase volumes continue to tick up in response to the policies done by the new government and by the Bank of England rate cut cycle, we would expect to see profit improvement in that business. Whether it quite gets to profitability during the course of the year, I'm not sure yet. On Optima Legal, the biggest issue we need to face in that business is making sure we bring down the break-even point for that business. And we took a good step forward in improving productivity in that business by about 130%, at least on one metric, during the course of the year. We need more productivity improvement to bring down the break-even point. And that, I think, particularly relates to some of the overheads in that business.
Again, whether that gets us to full break even during the course of the year, I don't know, but we are expecting a good step forward in the profitability of that business during the year.
Probably the thing I'd also add, Scott, is that, Elizabeth, which you would have seen in there, we have a very clear focus on what we can control in terms of the cost base on all those respective businesses, and we're seeing that come through. The thing I would add on the digital solutions one, noting that the size of it and the small dimension, we are winning business and Value Australia is an example of that, where we won first tier one bank this financial year. We've got another tier one bank that's using Value Australia as from a consulting perspective, and we do also have expectations of continued growth as an example in Value Australia, within the first half of the financial year.
Okay, awesome. Thank you. I do have more questions, but I'll jump back in the queue and, all the best, Glenn, and congrats on retiring. Enjoy the golf course, I suppose. Thank you.
Thanks, Elizabeth.
Thanks, Elizabeth.
Thank you. The next question comes from Brendan Carrig from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, Glenn and Scott. I just wanted to maybe delve a little bit, deeper into the revenue guidance and sort of compositionally, if you could maybe step through some of the assumptions that are underpinning that guidance. So, I mean, let's take out Smoove, 'cause you probably get a call it a 20-odd million AUD uplift, just from the annualized impact of Smoove. But just, yeah, just would be interested to know, what other assumptions from, you know, the other businesses and/or the Australian exchange business market assumptions, that you have in there. 'Cause yeah, like I, yeah, U.K. exchange revenues would be a good, a good thing to flag as well, please.
Maybe I'll start, Glenn, and Brendan, thanks for your question as well. I think as Glenn highlighted, there's quite a few moving parts in the economic environment, both in Australia and the U.K. And the way we've thought about that is to pick a viewpoint which is for modest improvement in the economy in both jurisdictions over the course of the next year. But we do think call out there is downside risk. So given that, on the exchange, as you know, we reset the price come 1 July, and that's based on the CPI print at the end of March, and that was just over 3%.
And then from a volume perspective, it varies a little bit from year to year, but in general, we see volumes grow at more or less the long run GDP rate for Australia for the want of a better assumption. Our Chief Economist, Julie, will probably tell me there's a lot more other factors than that, but I suspect that's our central thesis. Then, as you say, there's an annualization effect from Smoove. We are continuing to expect revenue growth in the digital solutions businesses. There's a couple of points in that, [ID] being the biggest business. We think that set itself up very well this year. But we do think there is more opportunity, both within its existing customer set and also in servicing PEXA's exchange customers, particularly in the FI sector.
Value Australia, as Glenn called out, we see good growth opportunities in the banking sector for that product and also for Lending side, both with its own developer customers and PEXA's developer customers, and also the financial institutions. And then lastly, for Optima Legal, we are expecting a improvement in revenue in that business, partly driven by continued improvement in share, back up towards its natural market share around about 20% to 22%, and also improvements overall in the level of remortgage activity. I think that's actually the biggest flex factor for Optima at the moment, because while the Bank of England cut rates about four weeks ago, we're not yet seeing a flurry of remortgage activity in the U.K. following that rate cut. So,
But having said that, most people in the Northern Hemisphere are on summer holidays at the moment, so we'll see what the autumn brings.
I think the bottom line now, Brendan, is we are expecting to see improvement across all business lines from a revenue.
Okay, and is there anything factored in for U.K. exchange revenue? So when NatWest, yeah, if they do start transacting in FY 2025, should there be any revenue coming through or, or should we be thinking about rebates, so maybe revenue is more of an FY 2026 story for the international exchange business?
There is modest revenue already being earned in the exchange because Hinckley and Shawbrook have come off their payment
holidays. Shawbrook's still paying a bit of a discounted rate. That said, it's relatively modest levels. We expect an uptick, though, in our budgets for FY 2025 for the exchange. It's definitely not at sheep station levels, but we are expecting to see see some sort of contribution
from that part of the business during the year.
But you're right, Brendan, to insinuate. It's really 26 to 27 periods, the key points. The other thing, just to flag, we do anticipate that we'll be able to share more around the half year.
Okay, that's clear. I'll jump back in the queue, and Glenn, if I don't see you before again, yeah, congratulations, and hopefully we chat again soon.
I appreciate it, Brendan.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Annabel Li from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Morning, Glenn and Scott. Thanks for taking questions. I've just got two. So I think firstly on margins, with the pause in interoperability, and obviously you've got the recovery and transfer volumes, should we be expecting exchange margins above the around 55% that you did in 2024? Or are there other cost items that we need to be thinking about, there?
Yeah, look, a great question. I think that there's a couple of things I just want to flag. Firstly, we do want to emphasize more on the group margin, because we feel that the group margin is an important part of the business, showing where we're investing our focus on the broader group revenue, so that. In terms of the exchange margin, you know, we didn't give guidance on the exchange margin, but I think the best thing I can say is we do expect to still have strong exchange margin, first point. The second element, and Scott flagged this. We will continually focus on our operational efficiency across the group, which is all the group. That includes automation and other different dimensions. We also do expect to see improvement in the exchange revenue, so that's the other side.
But the last bit I would add is, while interoperability has paused, I think the key word is paused. New South Wales and Queensland are still exploring their options, and we will actively work with all the jurisdictions and all the regulators to help them in their exploration.
Annabelle, it's Scott here, just to add to Glenn's question, and thanks, thanks for your question as well. We continue to expect very solid performance from our exchange business, and we certainly don't expect it to go backwards from this year.
I think in terms of the level of upside, it's always a little difficult to tell because the business responds well to operating leverage. But because of some of the uncertainties in the environment, we don't quite know how much operating leverage there will be.
Yeah.
Okay, great. That's helpful. And just on the U.K., I wanted to just ask about how conversations with conveyancers are going, just for the sale and purchase piece. Because I'm just wondering, like, what's the key incentives that they have? Is it that they work on more transactions, because the majority of them are being paid on sale and purchase completion? Or what would kind of drive them to take on that product?
Well, maybe I kick off first, Annabel, and then Scott can certainly add. One of the critical things in the U.K. market, while we're certainly confident on that market, is that the size of the market, but also the poor customer experience in terms of sale and purchase. So you get about a 30% sort of fall over and poor customer experience. That also leads to poor practitioner business experiences as well, and rework difficulties in terms of doing the transactions among other things, and not seeing the data. The engagement. And this has continually improved the right way, engagement with the conveyancing fraternity and also our acquisition of Smoove does two things for us. The fraternity, firstly, is starting to see actually PEXA and Smoove will be value adding to their business.
Secondly, Smoove gives us access to around about two thousand practitioners, and we already have engagement with that practitioner network. And, our intent is to get the PEXA tech into the Smoove platform and services, so our practitioners who use Smoove can use the PEXA tech and become more efficient and effective in providing their services. And also, like we see in Australia, being able to provide the conveyancing services on a greater timeframe, but also more conducive to their business needs as well. So the indications are positive, but we have to work that through.
Maybe just to add to that, Glenn. At the general level, we see three sets of benefits for practitioners from using the PEXA platform. One is because a lot of the coordination in the U.K. between different parties, the transaction is very fragmented. There is actually a lot of coordination costs that practitioners incur, and our Workspace design actually removes a lot of that friction.
Yeah.
Secondly, post-completion processes are typically expensive, particularly in relation to trust accounting. And our settlement processes and lodgment processes do away with a lot of those traditional post-transaction activities, and that also removes a reasonable amount of cost for practitioners. Thirdly, the PEXA environment is very, very secure from a cyber security perspective, and actually one of the largest forms of professional indemnity payout in the U.K. is to do with cyber risk for practitioners. And, we're doing some work at the moment to size that, but we think to size the benefit of using the PEXA platform to reduce cyber risk, but it looks to be reasonably significant. And, we would hope to see that professional indemnity insurance premiums would come down for those who are using the PEXA platform, although that's still to be proven.
In relation to the specifics, the effect of the PEXA, of the Smoove platform is that, people who are on that panel, which are those panels, which are arranged by Smoove, get selected by mortgage brokers and customers and the like. My guess is that if you are gonna be on the Smoove panels in future, we will be making sure it's clear whether or not you're a user of the PEXA platform, as a way of signaling to people that the experience will be much better.
Great. Thanks, guys.
Thanks.
Thank you. Our next question is from Ed Henning from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. The first question I've got, just can you just clarify, the two large banks you're talking about are Tier 1 banks, which are greater than 10% market share. And in discussions with those banks, are they willing to start to integrate earlier, with yourself and do the BOE testing slot a little bit later when it becomes available, hopefully first quarter-ish next year? And just to confirm on that, the integration period can take, you know, roughly six to 12 months with a large bank? As a first question, please.
Yeah, thanks, Ed. Maybe I'll kick off, so just making sure I've got this right. You're talking about the two additional T1s that we've flagged for the PEXA Pay? and if that's the question
Yes.
Yeah, they are in the T1. They're in the top category, so that's the first point. The second point, in terms of the access to a Bank of England PEXA Pay slot, that will. We're already oversubscribed in terms of the number of institutions who want the upcoming PEXA Pay Bank of England slots. Now, that's in negotiation and discussion with the Bank of England, so we can't determine when those slots become available. We are looking, though, depending on the Bank of England, you know, around the first quarter calendar year next year. But that could move in all different ways, and as soon as we've got confirmation, we'll obviously confirm that.
In saying that, the allocation of those slots depend on a couple of factors, including that the Bank of England agree that we want to give it to XYZ organization as well as us, and also that financial institution saying that they're ready to take the slot and ready to actually move forward to be enabled to do transactions. So there's numerous aspects of that as well. So I can't give you any more clarity than that at this particular point in time. I think the third point, in terms of does it take six to nine months, unfortunately, the answer I'm gonna say there is it depends, and it depends on the tech that those organizations have got. It depends on what other priorities they've got.
And it also depends on whether they want to use an API version, where it's integrated into their systems, or whether they want to use a user interface version as well. So it does depend on all those factors. In all those situations, what is a positive is the work that we've done with Hinckley, Shawbrook, NatWest, and the other one that we're onboarding at the moment. They've all gone through or going through those permutations and combinations with which gives us more confidence and experience. And the last area to add to it, if you're a customer of Optima Legal, also that's a positive because we've already enabled Optima Legal. Be that as it may, you don't have to be a customer of Optima Legal.
Sorry, just to clarify, are the two big banks you're talking to willing to start to integrate before the testing slot, or are the banks wanting to wait for the testing slot to start the integration process with yourself?
That's a good question, and apologies I didn't answer that one. That also depends. Some of them are actually saying: "Actually, can we start the work earlier?" You don't have to wait for the Bank of England allocation because we can do some of the front-end work as well. It really comes down to the case-by-case, Ed.
I think it's fair to say that
Okay, but
Oh, sorry. It's fair to say that the bulk of the conversation with them to date has been getting them to the point of testing. You can imagine we've got to follow up a whole bunch of other conversations as subsequently.
In saying that, Ed, and just to that point, one of the things that we have been working on, and which we have been working with different institutions, let's not do the Bank of England last, first. Let's see how we can get you on first, so we can accelerate the process. And that was where I was indicating in the presentation where we're looking at different ways with the Bank of England ourselves about doing things in a slightly different order. And I understand where you're coming from
Can we move it faster? And the short answer: there's some of the work, that is some of the work we're looking at.
Okay. No, that's, that's helpful. And then just a couple of other clarity questions. Obviously, you're progressing with NatWest and it's, you know, you've talked about, you know, it's more on their timetable on integration and stuff and getting going. Is that now getting to the really pointy end? Do you think you're really close on that one, to start to see some transactions, or is still a little while away?
Again, I understand what you're saying. It does move, Ed, to be quite frank. You know, it does move. You understand that. So we do everything we can within our control, and this is where Scott was talking about earlier, to see how we can move people forward and earlier, and we do continually explore that throughout. So, you know, I always look for how can we make it happen earlier, rest assured, and if we can, we will.
Okay. No worries. And then just a last clarification question. Just on slide 33, you talk about your roadmap and the sale and purchase version one and version two. What percentage of the market or of the sale and purchase market can, you know, version point five, one, and then two do? Is it like, you know, like 50, you know, 60, 70% of sale and purchase transactions?
I'll just describe what the different versions are, and then that might help sort of give a sense of
Yep.
the coverage. So version 0.5 is a very, very limited feature product. And basically, it's a test product, and we've got a range of test transactions with one of our existing customers, which we'll try and put through to make sure that te basic plumbing works the way we want it to work.
Yeah.
Version 1 is what we call a one-sided product, where you don't need both the purchaser and the vendor to be on platform. And that's a bit different in design than we have in Australia, where the product is designed to have both sides of the transaction in the workspace. But recognizing that we're in a different position in the U.K., we have decided we'll be able to release a one-sided product. That gives us exposure to flows such as that from the new home builders, which are typically a one-sided transaction. that's roughly about 10% of the flow in the market, and gives us also a little bit of extra others of similar ilk. Version 2 is a two-sided product. It's not fully featured, but it does allow for both purchaser and vendor to be in the workspace together, and we think that's roughly a 40% to 50% coverage capability.
Yeah. Yeah, so we
Okay.
By the end of the financial year, we believe we will have a sizable capability in terms of sale and purchase. The other thing, just to add to Scott's point, and Scott touched on it a bit with the home builders, we are exploring multiple paths to actually get sale and purchase onto the platform.
The other important piece, just to add to that Ed, is 30% of the flow in the U.K. for sale and purchase for cash?
Yeah.
No bank involved.
That's a bit bigger than is the case in Australia. And that two-sided product, we think, will be a good candidate for those, that transaction type. And the good thing about that is we can get flow without actually having to bring banks into our ecosystem.
Which is also one of the important elements of Smoove as well, coming back to the distribution there.
Okay. No, that's helpful. All right, I'll leave it there 'cause I know other people have got questions. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand the conference back to Mr. King for closing remarks.
Thank you. Well, firstly, a couple of things I wanna add. I just wanna say thank you to everyone who asked questions. We do appreciate the time and people listening to the call. Secondly, I wanna again reiterate that we've had a good, solid financial year 2024. We know we've still got more work to do, but we are progressing on the execution. We have clear priorities for FY 2025, and we do see and expect continued performance improvement in FY 2025 across our businesses. Lastly, I just wanna say thank you to all our shareholders, customers, our people, and to my colleagues in particular. Thank you.
Thank you. That concludes our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.