Good morning and thank you for attending today's investor presentation in respect to the annual results of Sequoia Financial Group . One of the most important parts of today is obviously to share the financials, but it's also to take questions from the audience. If you would like to ask a question, we've had several come in prior to today's meeting from shareholders, which is terrific. If you'd like to ask a question along the way or now, feel free to ask the question in the Zoom box, and Steve Kallona will come back at the end of this presentation and ask those questions of me. If we don't get time, I'll certainly take notes of all of your questions and reply personally. We certainly would hope to be able to do that. In presenting today, I would obviously like to refer to the disclaimer.
Everything I talk today is general in nature. It's not personal advice to any party, and it's to do with the 30th of June 2025 results tabled to the ASX this morning. I would like to talk about the full year 2025 in a snapshot. The results were really, in respect to EBITDA, a tale of two halves. EBITDA at the end of the 12 months for the full year has come in at $9.9 million, which is slightly above what we did discuss at the half year, and it's a 13.7% increase on full year 2024, despite the fact that we've actually closed down or sold off five business units. Revenue was flat at $124 million, but as I said, we did divest five businesses over the 12 months. On a like-for-like business, our normalized business has increased.
As you would know, we did let go or terminate a few large advisors throughout the year. The operating business itself, on a continuing basis, has grown over the 12 months and is looking good. That was reflected in the $18 billion of funds under advice that we now have within the Enterprise Financial Planning business and within the Sequoia Wealth Management business, which is the two licensee for hire businesses, which is a terrific result. Of that $18 billion, it's actually quite important to note that about 60% of that is on investment platforms such as Netwealth, HUB24, Praemium, and the like. We are now looking also at a couple of new platforms, one of which we've actually taken an investment in through Centrepoint Alliance. The net profit after tax was $5.84 million. Sorry, net profit before tax, that is, apologies, was $5.84 million.
That was before we wrote down $4.29 million in goodwill in the licensee service division over the 12 months. If you add that back, the full year dividend of $0.04 per share is on that 60% payout ratio we've been talking about. I'm very pleased that we have continued to be able to pay very strong dividends at a payout ratio that is reasonable over the period of time that I've been the CEO. In fact, over the last three years, we've paid $0.04, four of that was a special, $0.07, and then $0.04 this year. Very consistent dividend distribution to our shareholders from the operating business. We haven't raised capital. In fact, we've done buybacks over the period. It's been very strong results in respect to the yield that the company's been able to deliver to shareholders.
I might move to an overview of what's happened in this particular 12 months because I think it's very important to talk about it. As I said, the first half was disappointing. I think the market reacted to that and the share price fell throughout the last six months for a variety of reasons. Much of that, I believe, was to do with the first half numbers being quite poor in respect to the growth appeared to have been slowing. The second half was very, very strong. You can see that we're back in growth. The three business units that we have are all reacting very positively to the transition that we implemented to have two divisions structure. The first half we did recognize the restructure cost of that. In the second half, you can see by the numbers, it's all starting to pay off now.
Whilst we were paying it forward and we did take some grief with our share price and some of the market commentary, the decisions we made to simplify this business appear to be now bearing fruit, which is terrific. We did invest in ongoing technology investments in both of our divisions, particularly in the legal documents business in the first half and part of the second half. Certainly in much of the second half, we did invest in more technology in respect to our compliance oversight of the 300-odd planners that we have within the business. That's going to be an ongoing investment. We did commence a new committee and we're doing a lot of work on artificial intelligence, compliance oversight, frameworks, etc., to improve the business so that we are one of the leading licensee groups in the country. That is going to be important.
On the breaches, as advisors will know, as shareholders will know, and the community's been writing about it in the press, etc., we did have a need to take decisive action on some breaches of three practices that we had within the network. We have removed all those three advisor practices from the group over the last 12 months. We have worked very closely with the regulator and the clients of those particular practices. I think that in 12 months' time, a lot of the noise around that will have played out. We are looking to be very actively supporting the clients of those three practices. We will be announcing some strategies in respect to that in coming weeks. We have been working on some strategies to support the clients.
We have employed a number of additional self-employed advisors within our salaried advice business to support those clients with a few strategies that we will be looking to announce in coming weeks. As I said, the enhanced governance framework, we were fortunate enough for Danielle Press, the former executive at ASIC, and Matt Wilson, the former founder of IG Markets Australia, to join a governance committee. We are in the process of renewing our board at present. One of the key drivers of our selection process will be to have someone who has a very strong governance framework and someone who comes from compliance and industry to enhance that framework. We are looking to become the leading provider of licensee services and salaried advice in the marketplace.
A part of that was introducing Daryl Stout into the team to head the licensee services division, which I have pretty much covered being the CEO and the Head of Licensee over the last few years. Daryl's appointment is very significant in that, having worked with AMP for a long time and Insignia for a long time, understanding the needs of advisors. We have put together some support packages that we are expecting to go live with in October 2025. We will be looking to introduce to the market a whole range of new activities that we think will allow the business to recommence its growth in advisor numbers once again. One of the things that I think is important to note is we are being consistent in what we have talked about in our three-year strategy. We have always been keen to have a mix between growth and yield.
The 60% top-end yield on net profit after tax, normalized net profit after tax, has allowed us to use some of those franking credits that we've built up over time from the profit in the operating business and some of the divestments that we've made over time. We have a current pool of franking credits of $17.8 million. The noise around franking credits disappearing that was highlighted maybe 12 to 18 months ago appears to have eased a bit. We're still taking that view that we would like to use the franking credits over time and keep our dividend at around 60% of normalized profit after tax. In the accounts, you will see that we wrote down some goodwill in the licensee servicing business this year, which did impact the actual net profit after tax that we've declared.
We're paying out 60% of that net profit after tax when you add back that goodwill, which is a non-cash item. Having a strong balance sheet also puts us in a strong position to do a number of other things. We did undertake a share buyback in 2024. That's not our number one priority, but it puts us in a position if we do need to step into the market at times of weakness that we can support the shares and buy back stock that we believe is undervalued at that particular time. It also allows us to have enough capital to make investments, whether it be in strategic investments such as the Centrepoint Alliance investment we have, which is we're owning 16.5% of Centrepoint currently.
That's paying us a good yield, or it allows us to make other strategic type investments by having a strong balance sheet without having to go to shareholders and raise capital for those sort of things at a price that we believe is not representing the true value of the company. It also puts us in a strong position to make acquisitions with cash and into the three core areas of our business. We did take a couple of steps back in the last 12 months in respect to redefining what our purpose was, and that's bringing back our purpose into the three main areas: licensee for hire, salaried advice business, and the legal document business. We're now ready to use cash to make acquisitions in those areas of our business.
Our licensee network, being arguably the part of the business that we're best known for, has been reasonably stable despite a lot of noise. The advisor network has been very committed to the group. Our team has been exceptional in respect to compliance and support. I think we're placed in a really strong position with the appointment of Daryl Stout and other key executives within the group, Steve Kallona stepping up to the Head of Compliance, Justin Harding being Head of our Legal, some terrific compliance staff, some terrific support staff, and they're supporting the advisor practices. Our score that you get when you ask your clients hasn't been higher. That's a very positive message that's going out to the business. The licensee for hire business at 321 advisors across 219 practices presently is an area we would like to grow to.
We've always talked about being at 5% of the market share. We believe there's 10,000 advisors of the 15,000 advisor practices, 15,000 advisors under the Financial Advice Register that fit the type of financial advisor that we are looking for. Therefore, our longer-term three-year target is to get to 500 advisors with around 350 practices over the next three years. The salaried advice businesses that we have, and we have five salaried advice businesses looking to offer different parts of the advice chain, and we have 24 staff currently in those salaried advice businesses. We're definitely looking to grow that. The return on investment in that type of business is far higher than the return in the licensee for hire business. It's looking at sort of 33% - 40% of GP, and that's the sort of margins that we expect to be able to grow.
We're definitely in the market to acquire retiring advisor books. Of the 321 advisors, you would expect 30 or 40 of those advisors over the next 12 months may be looking to retire, we're the natural buyer, and we'll be looking to buy where appropriate, some of those advisors, but also looking to increase the number of advisors at the top level by more than that retiring book by at least another 30, 10% growth net on top of those retiring advisors. I touched on before the $18 billion of funds under advice that we do have in the network. What we're seeing is the revenue that advisors charge these days is not necessarily aligned with funds under advice. The days of commissions and all those sorts of things are well beyond us. The Royal Commission opened up our eyes to that.
What advisors are now doing is they're charging a fee for service, and they're charging an increasing fee for service because demand is outweighing supply, and they're seeing growth in the number of clients. What that is seeing is because the fixed fee that they're offering their clients is the clients are introducing more family members, bringing across more of their investments, and we're seeing that grow in respect to the funds under advice that we look after. More than 60% is on platforms. One of the reasons that we do have an investment in Centrepoint Alliance is because they have a terrific platform that they've recently launched and some managed accounts that they have had for quite some time. We're supportive of that, and we're looking to sign up and support that strategy with them as a partner and as almost their largest shareholder.
In respect to growth, the financial planning industry, going back in the early days when I first started, you would come to an AMP or a Colonial Mutual or a National Mutual or names like that have gone now, and you would become a salaried advisor of those, and you'd learn the trade, and then you'd go on and become an advisor in your own right. Today, what happens is that there's a professional year that's needed to be undertaken, and at present, across the InterPrac Sequoia Wealth Management Network, we have 30 parties doing their professional year currently across about 28 of our practices.
There are a couple of our practices that have got a couple of professional year candidates within them, but most practices, 28 of them, have got one professional year candidate, and they're the advisors of tomorrow as they come out off their 12 months of that professional year, which we're very supportive of with all the education programs and the seminars and the education, the training that we're providing, not only the practice, but those professional year candidates. You've got tomorrow's advisors coming through, and that's a great grounds for further growth. I think one of the ambitions Daryl Stout has is to be known at Sequoia as being one of the best training grounds and one of the excellent places to go if you're looking to enter this industry and join a financial planning practice under a professional year so that you can be tomorrow's advisor.
That comes from having state-based compliance and practice management. We have state managers in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, WA, and South Australia. The WA practice manager looks after Northern Territory, and the Victorian practice manager looks after Tasmania. We have practice managers in each state. We also have dedicated compliance managers to each state. The advisors in each of the states across Australia are getting dedicated support from the same person each time, whether it be on practice management or on compliance. They can get consistent messaging. We do look to change it up a little bit in the compliance team so people do not get used to the same compliance manager for more than three years and move them state by state.
That is the goal we are having, and that really gives the advisor that selects one of our licensee for hire businesses the type of support they really need. That includes on the educational front. I am doing this presentation today on our Sequoia Media platform from our Melbourne office, as you can see. What we are doing is our Sequoia Media is supporting our educational programs with weekly webinars, with quarterly PD days, as well as the live PD days. We are getting more sessions to more advisors on more topics because of our ownership in the media business, and that is being very supportive to the group. I want to touch on the elephant in the room, Shield and First Guardian. I think the first half results and the noise around Shield and First Guardian has been very loud.
I want to give you an update on where we sit with that. We empathize with the clients who have investments on platforms within Shield and First Guardian. Clearly, it is not something that we saw coming. We believed that both Shield and First Guardian were reputable managers with reputable responsible entities, with research that was of a standard that we believe was high, with platforms who approved their products. What ended up occurring and becoming evident in First Guardian's case in 2025 and in Shield's case in late 2024 when ASIC took the action they did was completely different than anyone's understanding. We took action very early. We took proactive action in respect to Shield in July 2023, well before there was any noise about any impropriety on Shield of any kind. In First Guardian's case, we took action in December 2023.
We stopped all new business completely from those platforms, not because we knew there was an issue, but because what we recognize is that some of the advisors within the network tend to look to having a higher allocation to funds that had less than five years' track record, and we wanted to know more about that. Over time, we obviously found out there were reasons they may have done that, unbeknownst to us in July 2023 or December 2023, and we did take action. [Bench Egg] and Riley Financial, from a compliance point of view, were placed on compliance vetting as early as December 2023. That effectively ceased all new business from them at that particular time. When you look at our financials, since December 2023, there's been no new business written from those entities whatsoever.
We were very, very early, and that was well before ASIC or the regulators or any parties felt that there was an issue with Shield or First Guardian. We certainly didn't. We met them later. If you read the SQM research and you look at the quality of auditor in particular that Shield had in BDO, the high-quality platforms that approved those products, there was no reason for us to doubt that Shield and First Guardian were what they claimed to be. That said, there's a lot of clients from those three advisors that have investments in Freeze. The receiver has made some claims on what might come back. I believe that the latest estimate on Shield is $0.60 in the dollar may come back. In First Guardian, it may be lower than that.
One of the things that the InterPrac advisors did recommend those products within the platforms, they did them on APRA-regulated platforms. They didn't invest directly as some of the other cases did. You saw a lot of other licensees set up self-managed super funds and invest directly with Shield or First Guardian, and that offered those members very little protection. In our case, all of the funds under management is in APRA-regulated superannuation funds. It is our belief that there's protection under APRA-regulated superannuation funds that we are looking to discuss with those members. We have a client information pack, and we're writing to every single member at present, and we're talking to regulators and all of the parties at present in respect to how we can support those clients. We're being proactive on that.
We believe the Australian superannuation system is the best superannuation system in the world because of the controls APRA had introduced back in 2013. We are looking to talk to our clients that were introduced to investments in Shield and First Guardian, whether it be through Netwealth or through Macquarie or through One PEO or other platforms, about how we believe that we can support them in the future. What we did learn from Shield and First Guardian was a couple of things. Certainly, where the RE and the manager are aligned, and they have to be separate parties, but I think there's a learning in respect to independent trustees and independent REs, particularly for smaller new funds. We have had learning from that.
We've had a learning that the APRA-regulated superannuation system, which we truly believe in, does provide member protection far more than non-APRA-regulated superannuation investments in this particular space. We are learning from that. We have appointed Danielle Press, as I said, Danielle Press, to head our Risk and Governance Committee. Matt Wilson, there's a team of six of us on that committee. It is not taking over the role of running the AFLs, obviously. It is just another gateway between the board of Sequoia and the operating businesses being InterPrac Financial Planning and Sequoia Wealth Management. I think it's a first of its kind, and I think it's a very proactive step that we're doing, and it's a part of the learning from Shield and First Guardian.
Probably finishing on this point, we welcome clients that were recommended, Macquarie or Shield or Macquarie, sorry, or Netwealth, etc., to make contact with our salaried advice team and proactively work with us so we can support them. I'll move to the licensee services division again and just give you a bit of color on what it is and the simplification and also talk about what our goals for full year 2026 are in respect to that. The licensee for hire business is basically two businesses, InterPrac Financial Planning and Sequoia Wealth. That makes up the majority of our income. These are self-employed practices that are either a single-person practice or they have a number of authorized reps under their corporate authorized representative status, and they use our licensee. We provide them a whole range of services, and they pay us a fee for doing that.
That is a business, as I said before, we would like to grow to around 500 in total over the next three years. In the next 12 months, we want to increase the net numbers, net I'm talking, by 10% and increase the revenue per advisor by 10%. The statistics of the industry say the bottom part is the easiest because advisor income is increasing at a higher rate than that across the industry. There are not enough advisors for the supply. Our goal will be to get 10% more advisors in our network this time next year from purely organic growth. We may look at acquisitions in the future like we have in the past, and that might drive our numbers quicker. Purely organic, we're looking to grow number of advisors by 10%. The salaried advice business is those five entities.
Sequoia Financial Advice is a traditional mum and dad advice business that the majority of our financial planners in one of those businesses runs. We've been acquiring some retiring practices over time. That business is growing. It's profitable. It's well run. We have a young guy who's running that team now who's been absolutely terrific in helping us turn that around, and we expect that business to grow strongly and probably be the leader of the five salaried advice businesses that we have. Sequoia Family Office is a specialist business. It's providing high net worth advice, particularly to the Asian market. There's a number of cross-border opportunities that we're currently working on. Sophie Chen runs that business, and she's been terrific in putting together an offer for high net worth local Chinese investors because of her background and Mandarin-speaking team. We're seeing funds under advice in that particular business grow.
There's a number of exceptional opportunities in that particular area that we'll be looking to realize over the next 12 months. Sequoia Asset Management is our lower-cost type general advice business where we have three staff providing general advice, particularly on risk insurance, but a little bit of other portfolio management types where they might have a model portfolio and just put that out under general advice to the public. Sequoia Corporate Finance is a business that 2023, 2022 was a strong performer for the group. 2024, we had a very reasonable year, and 2025, that's just finishing now, was a poor year. We got started very well in that particular area in July and August, and we think that's going to be a significant contributor led by Alex Fabbri and Michael Holland and growing.
We think that particular business is going to add a lot more value to the group than it has in the past. The Sequoia Home Loans business is growing very quickly, run by Sam Wetzler and a team of advisors. There are 25 staff across those salaried advice businesses. It's a good margin. A few of the businesses probably didn't perform as well in the last 12 months for varying reasons, but we'd like to increase the number of advisors by 25% in this next 12-month period and like to double it up for the salaried advice business. I think that's not an ambitious target given what we've currently got and the systems we've got. On the media side, Jed Bertalli and the team in Sydney have done a terrific job turning this business around. It was serious loss-making in the previous 12 months.
May and June, we've turned it around. The business is now offering its service to a whole lot more clientele and is definitely delivering a terrific service to the internal businesses, including InterPrac and our documents business in providing, helping them. There are more advisors also using that media business to promote themselves with their customers. The industry trends, which I talked about a little bit, the demand supply, the number of advisors in total has fallen from 25,000 in 2019 to 15,400. As I touched on, I believe of that 15,400, there's 10,000 approximately advisors that fit the licensee for hire type business that we have. Within that 15,400, there are a lot of advisors that might be an accountancy practice that just give general advice or there might be a fund manager, etc. In my belief, there's about 10,000 advisors.
It's a target market for our licensee for hire business. Advisors are now managing around $100 million of funds under advice each, with the average client having about $800,000. This is industry. That's CoreData information, and that's increasing. The advice fees are rising. I said we would like to see our advice fees rise by 10% in the next 12 months. CoreData shows that they're rising by 18% year on year. Demand is outstripping supply everywhere. I think it talks about our model being credible. When I say I'd like to see advisor revenue grow by 10%, I'm not being aggressive. It's actually below the industry standard. We don't want to be below the industry standard, but I'm just letting you know the industry is growing at 18%, so you understand that. There's a few reasons for that. Aging population, the average customer of a financial planner is over 50.
The average population is aging, so there's more and more and more of these people with a need for financial advice as they, particularly between the period 55 to 65, as they come up to retirement, the demand for advice there is significant. There's another type of demand that comes in when you're seeing the intergenerational wealth transfer of those baby boomers.
That's not only driving financial advice, but it's also driving opportunities for our legal and document division and demand for asset structures, whether it be a self-managed super fund, particularly for people 60 +, and they want to manage their own pensions once they go into retirement, and they want to have investments that are more suitable and not necessarily under the APRA-regulated superannuation master funds that they could get if they wanted to invest in, say, direct property or some other things that retirees in retirement tend to want to do. We're seeing more demand for that. Our goals, touched on before, expand the advisor base by 10%, grow the salaried advice business by the number of planners, buy books, and continue to drive operational efficiency and use platforms.
Because we're cashed up and we are in a position to grow, we would like to also make some acquisitions that are accretive of this particular 12 months in this area, most likely in the salaried advice business for this division. If I'm looking at our other division, which is the legal documents business, and you're talking about much higher returns on gross profit in this particular business, we want to, in 2026, we want to grow the number of clients that select us as their legal administration document provider by 10%. When I'm talking about clients, what I'm talking about is the number of accountants, the number of financial planners, the number of legal practices that select one of our brands to offer to their clients when they're setting up a company, trust, self-managed super fund, partnership agreement, estate plan, etc., that are using us.
We've currently got about 10% market share. We want to get to 15% market share. That will need us to do some bolt-on acquisitions, but organically, we're looking to increase our client base by 10%. That should continue to see us grow, but absolutely, we're in the market to make acquisitions in this particular area. Part of the reason for acquisitions is so we can extend our product base. The other part of the acquisition is this type of customer is very, very sticky. When an accountant selects a document provider, as they have with ourselves, they very rarely change. They might only buy, an accountancy practice might buy 20 or 30 documents per annum. In our case, we have 1,400 or 1,450 accountants that select us. To move is to change providers is not a decision that's always top of mind. It's a sticky business.
Once you've got a business, and many of our businesses have got 15-year track records with this customer base, high retention. It's important that you continue to make acquisitions in this area if you want to get to a 15% market share. A lot of the smaller providers, the very, very small providers were set up by one and two-man operators. When they're 45, 50, 15 or 20 years later, they're now getting to retirement age, and there's opportunity for acquisitions there. We certainly are looking at a couple at present. On the self-managed super fund side, we're seeing a stability in the number of self-managed super funds that are set up, but we're seeing an increase in the number of self-managed super fund trustees, accountants, and financial planners that are wanting to outsource their back office. The compliance requirements for self-managed super funds have never been higher.
The capability of many of the trustees and self-managed super fund trustees that are trying to do it themselves has become even more difficult. The providers such as ourselves are seeing demand. We are looking to increase the number of accountants and financial planners that use us over the next 12 months by 25%. We're absolutely looking to make some acquisitions in this area of some of the small providers that give us the staff and the support that we need to take on the growth that's absolutely there in this particular marketplace. I'll go to the financials. The profit and loss numbers I touched on before, $9.9 million EBITDA up 13.7% on a normalized basis from the previous 12 months. Revenue, as I said, was stable, but that didn't take into account the five divestments that we made over the last 12 months.
On a like for like business, the business definitely grew. The net profit after tax of $3.2 million or $0.026 earnings per share is lower than we would have liked. What we did in the financial accounts this year is that we made an impairment of goodwill of $4.2 million in our licensee services business. In that, it looks like in future years, the net profit before tax and the EBITDA number will come closer together. If you add that back, we're sort of looking at around $7.8 million of earnings, and the 60% payout ratio that we've done with our dividend at $0.04 is based off that. $8 million times your 60% gives you $4.8 million, which is basically $0.04 per share of earnings.
The operating margin, which we talk about regularly, has moved up to 8%, a lot lower in the licensee for hire services business, solid in the salaried advice business, and very solid in the legal document business. Obviously, the latter two are the areas we're looking to accelerate our growth. Balance sheet, very strong, $48.5 million of net assets. That is after the write-down. That's $0.39 per share. We have $4.3 million of cash. We have $16 million of strategic investments in ASX listed companies, which includes obviously the major one being the 33 million shares that we hold in Centrepoint, which we bought the majority of those pre-30th of June, and then $10.5 million, $10.7 million of investments in other associates' business that we don't own 100% of, such as Morrisons, [EURI], etc. We have the $17.8 million franking credit balance as well.
That's a very, very strong balance sheet for a company that's trading on about $36 million market cap. We want to use that cash and that strength with our balance sheet to grow earnings, grow earnings per share, continue to pay dividends at the 60% level, and basically get re-rated at some stage. I started the presentation saying the most important thing is to take some questions, but really, I think probably the most important thing is to thank you. I'd like to thank our shareholders, your support through very challenging times. I know what it's like. I've been an investor since I was 18, so I've been investing in the ASX for 44 years. When a share price falls from $0.45 to $0.30 over 12 months, it's very easy to lose confidence in the management and that particular company.
Those who have supported us, I'd really like to thank you for that stability and allowing us to invest your money. I think the returns on equity and the dividend distribution that we've had gives you some reward, but really, we're wanting to give you a reward in the form of dividends and growth in share price. I thank you for your patience, and I believe that we can provide long-term value. I'd really like to thank our staff, the dedication of the staff, and the support I've had over the last 12 months, in particular from our team, from my CFO, Lizzie Tan, from our Head of HR, Floriane Allard, from Justin Harding in our compliance, our compliance team, all of the estate managers. Shout out to Bernie in Perth, who's doing some outstanding work.
Hamish McCathie, who heads up our Sequoia Wealth Management team, Sam Wetzler in the Sydney office, our superannuation team, Anja, Olga, Ada in the support team. It's just been a terrific team, and I'm really proud to lead this team. I'd like to thank our staff for that and our clients that have trusted us. There's been a lot written in the press over recent times, which can cause challenges, but our advisors, our accountants, and our clients who continue to reach out to us in their support, knowing that we care, we have high levels of empathy for their individual situation, and our life is dedicated to providing Australians a better future. I'd like to thank them. In finalizing, there's one particular staff member that I would really like to thank. On today, tonight, Diana Brady is leaving Sequoia.
Diana Brady, for those that don't know, is the longest-serving Sequoia employee. She joined Sequoia well before InterPrac and I arrived. She is the person who made me feel very welcome when I first came. She's been the backbone of this company from its commencement, and she's moving into retirement and going to spend time with her grandchildren. She's going to be absolutely dearly missed. In the shareholder presentation today, I would like to just thank her on behalf of all the other employees of Sequoia. As a shareholder, she is a shareholder, as is her husband, Stephen. I'd like to particularly thank her, wish her well in retirement, and she and people like her are the reason why I keep coming into work and love what I do and die. We're going to miss you very much.
Thanks very much for that, Garry. We do have some questions that came through prior to the presentation, so we might start with those. If you do have questions, you can still use the question and answer box to do that. I might start with a question from a shareholder who asked a few questions, but just to summarize them, he wishes to understand more on the three-year strategy, how we're going to retain and grow advisor numbers, and what is going to differentiate us. Once you've done that, maybe get an understanding of dividend and buyback policies as well.
Sure, there's a lot in that, Steve. Welcome to the video as our new Compliance Manager. I did touch on introducing you. For those who are watching, Steve is the new Head of Compliance at InterPrac and Sequoia. The first part of that, I think I covered a little bit, but the growth aspirations for the licensee for hire services business is to reach 500 advisors over that three-year period. We expect to grow on a net basis by about 10% per annum. The teams across the country in each state have got KPIs that they're looking to meet. We're particularly growing strongly in South Australia and WA over the last sort of six months. We would like to renew our growth in New South Wales and Queensland, and we've got some strategies that we're looking to launch in October in regards to that.
I think that's a pretty well-set target. On the salaried advice businesses, we're very keen to employ more advisors. There's a lot of younger advisors that are not necessarily wanting to be self-employed and are not necessarily hunters, but they're terrific in respect to the delivery of highly competent advice and looking after existing clients. If we were to acquire some of the retiring advisors, do a transition from that retiring advisor over a couple of years and hand the responsibility and the service support to some of those younger advisors coming through on salary, that certainly underpins the growth. Definitely in that legal document side, quite keen to look at some acquisitions and definitely keen to go out and talk to the accountancy firms. We believe our documents are the best documents in the industry.
We believe the technology investment that we've made over the last three or four years enables fast service, high-quality documents, upgrades, etc. Accountants and financial planners can really rely upon our legal firm that sits behind the documents. A couple of the other document providers in the market are actually not legal firms, so there's no sign-off by a legal representative for such documents. I think that puts us in a strong position to get out to the accounting industry and the financial planning industry, knowing that the document we're providing their clients has been signed off by lawyers.
Do you want to add anything on the dividend and buyback policies?
Yeah, sure. We are currently looking to recommence the buyback, so we're just going through the process that you need to give a notice. As a board, we do recognize that we want to use cash for acquisitions, etc., but at times when the share price is suffering, we're quite prepared to be in the market to buy back stock. On the dividend policy, I think it's pretty fixed between 40% and 60% of normalized operating net profit after taxes where we're looking to be for the next three-year period. We want to invest some of the cash that we're generating for acquisitions, buybacks, improvement of the business, and growth. We're definitely a growth company. Whilst we're currently trading at a really high yield, we're not about yield as such. We're about trying to grow this business, grow revenue, grow earnings per share, and make us a much larger business.
Great. There was another question about dividends and buybacks, but I think you've covered that, so I'll skip that one. There was another question from a shareholder that came through previously. You referred to the CAF investment. Can you expand on the reasons for such a high share ownership, as it almost makes up 50% of the Sequoia market cap?
Yes, certainly. We initially bought around 5% or 6% of CAF 12 months ago, or around 12 months ago, and then we increased our shareholding in CAF to 16.5%. We've got a very good relationship with the company. We particularly like their managed accounts, and we particularly like the new platform that they've launched. We will be introducing the new platform to our advisors to be able to access. The margin on platforms is very high. If you look at the Netwealth accounts and the HUB24 accounts of recent time, the net margin, once you get to significant scale, is 50%. I recall the early days of both of those companies where they were sub-scale and the market had some concerns. We're not necessarily looking to make the significant investment that CAF have made to have our own platform, but we're quite keen to support theirs.
It's a very cost-effective platform. Advisors will be able to differentiate themselves by using a platform at the cost structure that they've come out with. That's part of the reason. The other part of the reason is the dividends are strong, and we believe in consolidation of the industry. We've got a foot in the camp. We're looking. We believe both businesses have a lot of synergies, and I think there's opportunities for us to provide Centrepoint Alliance some services and definitely for Sequoia advisors and InterPrac advisors to use some of their services. Being almost the largest shareholder of Centrepoint places us in a good position to work with them.
Fantastic. Another one, there's a little bit in this one, so I'll walk through it slowly. In the first half result, you mentioned the first half was typically lower from an EBITDA perspective than the second half, so typically 40%, 60%. If we expected $8 million of FY 2026 EBITDA, do you expect that the first half of FY 2026 will retreat back to about $2.5 million- $3 million EBITDA?
It's an interesting question. We're not putting any forecasts out about $8 million. Obviously, we did $9.9 million EBITDA for the full year. Historically, the question is correct, and I did talk about that in the half-year results that the first half tends to be a little bit slower than the second half. That's absolute. The industry is changing, though, and so is the mechanics of our earnings. I do expect the first half to be lower than the second half for full 2026, but I don't think anything like it was in 2025, where it was sort of $2.5 million and $7 million. I think maybe 45%, 55% breakup, 40%, 60% breakup. The thing I would like to say is that July and August have been very strong. If we compared the corresponding periods for July and August to last year, we're in a very strong position.
I think I've got a lot more confidence in the first half for 2026 than what 2025 looked like.
Okay, great. I'm just looking through the questions, and it looks like you've answered pretty much all of them as you've been going. There is one. What is your expectation for practice growth in revenue and client numbers, and how do you think that will impact Sequoia's financials?
Yeah, no, it's quite an interesting statistic. If you look at the core data numbers and you look at the InterPrac and Sequoia Wealth Management data that we have, the average advisor has around 90 clients. We believe there's scope with using technology, outsourcing services, and such as our SMSF admin businesses, and the sort of services that we provide at InterPrac and Sequoia Wealth Management for advisors to do up to 150 clients per annum, looking after that type of client base. There's a significant upside in that. The second upside that you've got is the average advisor fee that's being charged is growing by 18% across the industry, but in the InterPrac advisor's case, they're charging much below the industry.
One of the things that we've been talking to our advisors about is you're doing a lot of hours and you're providing a lot of services for your clients, but you're maybe not charging enough. I think there's definitely scope. I talked about a 10% increase over the next 12 months. You know, with the demand supply argument, advisors are finding it really difficult to increase the number of clients they're taking on, and they're probably not charging enough.
They need to, and I think you'll see growth from within our practices at at least 10%, and certainly they've got scope to take on more numbers if they start using, you know, the power planning service that we offer, the self-managed super fund administration service we offer, start introducing more some of the AI tools that we've been introducing across the practices, work with your team, for example, on SOA implementation and improvement. I think there's scope for advisors to have more than 90 clients for sure.
Agreed. Agreed. Thank you. It doesn't look like there's any more questions, Garry. We're nearly at the hour, so we might wrap up. Is there anything you want to close off with before we finish up?
No, no. I would like to basically thank the shareholders for their questions. I'd like to thank everyone for participation. I'd like to thank Mr. Charles Sweeney, who was a Director over the last six years. He stood up as Chairman when we had some challenges from some disgruntled shareholders. I'd like to thank him. I'd like to thank Kevin Patterson, who went through the same issues as I did when there were some challenges. I'd also like to thank our new Chairman, Mike Ryan, for his counsel. He's brought a new passion to the business and most of all, all of the team. Once again, we're going to miss Dai Brady. Thank you.
Thanks, Garry. Thanks, everyone.