Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Tyro Payments Limited FY 2022 H1 results briefing. All participants are in a listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Robbie Cooke, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Emily, and good morning and welcome everybody to Tyro's half year results call. I'm joined by Prav Pala , our CFO, who'll be presenting with me this morning, and Giovanni Rizzo, our Head of Investor Relations. Our plan today is to focus on our published half year results for FY 2022 and our key accomplishments in the half. We'll also provide an update on our trading for January and February, and we'll talk about some of our key areas of focus for the balance of FY 2022 and beyond. Prav and I will spend about 40 minutes running through our results, and then we'll take questions. We'll talk to the slide pack circulated earlier today, which is also available on our website.
Just a noting, a recording of this earnings call will be posted on the investor section of our site shortly after the session to ensure those who are not able to dial in live can listen at their convenience. With the formalities out of the way, we'll get started. Before I talk about our results, I just wanted to reinforce what Tyro stands for and our position in the market. We are a technology-focused and value-driven company. We provide more than 61,000 Australian merchants with payment solutions and complementary banking products, largely developed on our core proprietary technology platform. We are creating an integrated ecosystem with payments at its core, enhanced by value-adding features and products designed to attract new merchants and retain existing ones.
The majority of our customers are small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the core verticals of health, hospitality, and retail, and our purpose-built solutions have been designed with those merchants' needs and preferences in mind. Turning to slide two and highlighting some of our key accomplishments in the half as we continued to execute against our growth plans. Most significantly, we achieved a record half year with a 31% lift in transaction value to AUD 15.8 billion for more than 61,000 merchants partnering with us, clearly demonstrating our ability to continue to capture segment share. This was no small feat in a period punctuated by lockdowns that impacted many of our merchants, particularly those in the hospitality and retail sectors in New South Wales, Victoria, and the ACT.
Adding to this is the fact that we did not get the tailwinds that others did from the COVID-induced spike in e-commerce transactions, given the card-present skew of our book. To put our performance in perspective, our growth was six times that of the overall card payments market, such that we now hold a 4.4% market share. The importance of our alliance with Bendigo Bank came to the fore in the half, delivering its first full six months contribution. The alliance added AUD 2.5 billion in transaction value to Tyro. This run rate being spot on with the estimate we provided back in October 2020 on first announcing the alliance. We also call out that our payments business performed strongly while carrying the cost of actions designed to assist our merchants as COVID lockdowns continued.
This included the provision of terminal rental release to COVID-impacted merchants and the deferral of pricing adjustments that we typically make annually to offset scheme and interchange fee increases. Given these actions, the 25% lift in statutory gross profits to AUD 68.1 million for the group's payments business was a strong result. After allowing for the gross profit share payable under the Bendigo Bank alliance, our normalized gross profit lift for the payments business was up 20% to AUD 65 million. Also of note, we had the first full 6 months of contribution from our health fintech business, Medipass, this acquisition being a key plank in our strategy to continue to build out our health vertical. It provides Tyro's health merchants greater claiming and payments capabilities, which I'll talk a bit about later on.
We also continued to invest in our Tyro Connect integration hub, which among other key features is providing unique data insights to some of our merchants on the Connect platform. We delivered a positive EBITDA result of AUD 2.8 million. Whilst lower than the AUD 8.5 million generated in the H1 of FY 2021, it reflects our continuing investment in growth initiatives, including the recently announced exclusive partnership with Telstra, the absence of any JobKeeper benefits in the period, some wage inflation impacts, and first-time costs associated with our newly acquired Medipass operation. Turning now to slides six and seven in the pack if you have it handy. We have a high conviction in our ability to accelerate our growth over the medium term. There are seven core areas of focus in that regard.
Firstly, our focus on our core verticals and providing built-for-purpose payments tech tailored for Australian merchants in those core verticals. We have demonstrated the traction here consistently over the years, but just looking at our performance since our IPO in December 2019, our transaction value CAGR is 29%, and our merchant count CAGR is 46%. We have every expectation this dynamic continues. Secondly, we are seeking to drive economies of scale, and we are demonstrating operating leverage in our business, which is important to us as we continue to pursue the considerable growth opportunities available. Delivering strategic partnerships only possible with a proprietary platform that can scale is another core area for growth. We have developed unique IP in our Bendigo Alliance and our Telstra exclusive partnership, and have a keenness to explore further opportunities to partner with others where we can access step changes in segment share.
Investing in our health business is an important growth initiative for us. With Medipass now integrated into our existing health vertical, we have the ability to offer a unified health payments and claiming solution that extends beyond private health insurance and Medicare Easyclaim to include a range of state and federal-based compensatory funders. The approach taken with Medipass is consistent with our overall strategy to build out our offering through acquisition, where there is a distinct opportunity to gain scale and enhance our segment position. The fifth pillar is our demonstrated capability to make strategic investments to enhance solutions for our merchants, and this also remains an area of focus. Examples here are our tactical investments in Me & You and Paper Claim, which are both progressing strongly.
On slide seven, we've highlighted our still nascent e-commerce offering and the opportunities to expand, particularly working with ISVs or independent software vendors such as Me & You, which is seen as opportunities to gain scale more quickly. The seventh pillar for growth is cross selling our ancillary products to our merchant base, such as our merchant cash advance loans, which are a perfect product for many SMEs. Finally, adding new core verticals. This is where the Tyro Go reader has a key role to play. It opens up the trade's vertical, provides a potential queue busting solution for larger format retail, and provides a fit for purpose solution for micro merchants. Looking at our financial results at a high level. Prav, we'll spend a bit more time on this in a moment.
Clearly, it continued to be a challenged period with COVID lockdowns, particularly in New South Wales and Victoria and the ACT, disrupting our merchants. Given this environment, as has been the case throughout the pandemic, we maintained our focus on actions designed to assist our merchants navigating COVID impacts. As I mentioned, this included delaying price increases we would ordinarily have undertaken to offset increases in scheme and interchange fees. It also included providing terminal rental relief and also providing loan repayment relief. Despite these actions, our business performed strongly in the half. In summary, as I mentioned, our transaction values were up 31%. Group revenue was up close to 30% at AUD 149.2 million. Our payments business generated a statutory gross profit result that was up 25% at AUD 68.1 million.
After allowing for the Bendigo Alliance gross profit share, the normalized gross profit result was AUD 65 million. Our banking business generated a 35% lift in gross profit to AUD 2.4 million. We produced a positive EBITDA result of AUD 2.8 million, while lower than the AUD 8.5 million generated in the H1. That does reflect the absence of AUD 4.5 million in JobKeeper benefits received last year, and the first time costs associated with our newly acquired Medipass operation and some wage cost increases. Turning now to slide 16 and providing some additional color around our payments operation. As mentioned, the value of transactions processed in the year lifted 31% to AUD 15.8 billion, notwithstanding the challenges in the year.
The addition of the Bendigo alliance for the full six-month period contributed AUD 2.5 billion to this amount. This growth was assisted by a 15% increase in merchants selecting Tyro as their payments provider, excluding the close to 18,000 or more than 18,000 Bendigo merchants. With the Bendigo merchants included, we ended the year with 61,554 active merchants on the books, to be precise. Merchants in our three core verticals, health, hospitality, and retail, represented 85% of our merchant count and made up 92% of our transaction value for the year. Our strongest transaction value growth was delivered in our health vertical, which is up 17%, with hospitality growing 12% while our retail vertical grew 5%.
Our largest states by transaction value contribution were New South Wales at 32%, followed by Queensland at 25% and Victoria at 22%. All states other than New South Wales and the ACT experienced double-digit transaction value growth. Victoria was the strongest at 31%. Very pleasingly, new merchant sign-ups capped approximately 1,200 new applications per month. Now with 104,000 terminals in the field, we remain the fifth largest merchant acquiring bank in the market, sitting ever closer to the four major banks. We continued to shine through in the year. Our prompted brand awareness has lifted to 23%, up from 17% a year ago.
Very pleasingly, given the experience of a year ago, our customer retention rates remained very strong, with our churn measured by transaction value relatively steady at 9% compared to 8.7% for FY 2021. Our churn rate by metric number at 10.1%, which is down from 11.3% in FY 2021. Now turning to our banking operations and just if you could turn to slide 21, please. Although our banking operations still only represent a small part of our overall business, it does present an alternative to the major banks and has strong prospects for continued growth. Our products are focused on providing our customers with innovative ways to meet their transaction banking and unsecured lending needs.
Our Tyro Bank Account is a fee-free interest-bearing transaction account, and now we have just under 5,000 Tyro merchants actively using that account, which is up from about 4,000 a year ago, with AUD 96.4 million on deposit as at 31 December 2021. Our term deposit offering, which is available through the Tyro App of AUD 4.4 million in term deposits as at 31 December 2021. Our cash flow unsecured loan product is designed to assist their needs in growing their businesses. This business loan is repaid from a merchant-selected predetermined percentage of card transaction volumes as generated by the individual business and is offered on the basis of an upfront fee. The innovative feature of this product is its repayment cycle up or down in accordance with the merchant's daily card transaction volumes.
Our merchant cash advance loans returned to strong growth as we switched back to an automated loan approval process in the half. This followed a period of manual approvals to mitigate the risks inherent due to COVID volatility. We also extended this product to make it available to a wider cohort of Tyro merchants with larger advances available. We wrote AUD 36.2 million in loan originations in the half compared to AUD 2.6 million in the same half last year. The average loan size in the half was around about AUD 41,000 compared to AUD 23,000 a year ago, and the average length of the loans was six months, which was pretty much in line with the prior period. The team managed the risk in this portfolio closely, with lending losses at a very low AUD 0.1 million.
I'll now hand over to Prav, who's going to step you through our financial position in more detail, and I'll return after that to discuss our outlook.
Great, thank you, Robbie. If you could all please turn to page 9 for an analysis of the financial performance. The half year continued to be disrupted by COVID, with New South Wales and Victoria in lockdowns for a significant portion of the six months. Under normal conditions, these states would represent a combined 60% of Tyro's transaction value. With this backdrop in mind, financials are strong with three key takeaways. Firstly, the results reflect sustained growth. In addition to organic growth, the Bendigo alliance and Medipass acquisition in FY 2021 contributed to recording total transaction value growth of 31%. This was achieved in a period when total card payments acquired in Australia stayed flat. Secondly, financial resilience.
Our strong capital position allowed us to execute on our strategy while continuing to do the right thing by our 61,000+ merchant base with repricing deferrals and rental waivers. Thirdly, a renewed focus on our banking offerings. Compared to PCP, we cautiously but steadily increased our lending book, reflected in originations of AUD 36.2 million over the half year versus only AUD 2.6 million for the H1 of FY 2021. In November 2021, we originated a record of AUD 8.2 million in monthly originations. The half year was, of course, not without challenges, as I will go through in more detail. Margin compression in the payments business was greater than expected, partially due to our decision to defer a fee increase coming out of our annual pricing review.
On the expenses side, with 46% of our permanent headcount in the technology space, we experienced greater than the average wage growth and turnover. While our full year results for FY 2021 followed the acquisition of Medipass and the announcement of our alliance with Bendigo Bank, this is the first time we're presenting results as a group for a full reporting period. The nuances of the Bendigo alliance are significant, and it is important to review the Tyro core business and the Bendigo book in addition to the performance of the combined business. To that effect, certain items have been normalized and detailed on page 31 of the pack for your reference. However, in summary, AUD 3.1 million has been deducted from the statutory gross profit, which is made up of AUD 4.4 million commission payable to Bendigo.
From a technical accounting view, this commission is treated below the line as amortization when it really should be deducted from EBITDA. The opposite adjustment is made to the amortization expense, although the amounts won't exactly align as the Bendigo intangible is amortized on a straight-line basis over 10 years. AUD 1.35 million is added back for processing and other fees currently incurred by Bendigo on merchants being migrated to Tyro. This is a temporary expense which will reduce as the rollout progresses. AUD 1.3 million is deducted from operating expenses, the majority of which, again, is to do with transitioning the remaining Bendigo merchants who have been integrated to Tyro but are yet to be migrated.
Normalizing these and jumping straight into the results, we report a gross profit of AUD 68.1 million versus AUD 61.2 million in the PCP, an increase of 11.3%. A key call-out here is AUD 4.5 million of JobKeeper income, which was included in the PCP and not normalized. Additionally, there was margin compression in the core Tyro business, in part due to a decision to defer a price increase scheduled in the H1. Gross profit of the underlying business is better understood by looking at the payment segment, which contributed 95% of total gross profit and which grew 25% on a statutory basis or 20% on a normalized basis. Operating expenses of AUD 65.3 million was up from AUD 52.7 million in the PCP, an increase of 24%.
I should highlight that this half presents Tyro as a group and therefore includes the costs of Medipass as well as the costs of the Bendigo alliance for the full six months, whereas the comparative half was Tyro standalone only. As a result, we reported EBITDA of positive AUD 2.8 million compared to AUD 8.5 million in the PCP. Noting that the comparative period included JobKeeper income of AUD 4.5 million, while the current period includes AUD 1.8 million of EBITDA losses from the nascent Medipass business. With these high-level results in mind, I will go through the gross profit of each segment in detail, shown on the right-hand side of page nine. Of the group gross profit of AUD 68.1 million, payments contributed AUD 65 million versus AUD 54 million in the PCP, growing 20%.
As this segment contributed 95% of gross profit, I will spend most of my analysis on payments. However, details of the other segments are provided in the pack. Banking contributed AUD 2.4 million, which although small, is growing and represents an increase of 35% to the PCP gross profit of AUD 1.8 million. You will recall that we consciously limited lending during the first wave of COVID. Since then, we have renewed our focus on lending, and we originated AUD 36 million in the half year compared to just under AUD 3 million in the H1 of FY 2021. The credit quality of the book was strong and we reported fair value gains in gross profit for both halves.
Finally, other income of AUD 0.7 million compared to AUD 5.1 million in the comparative half, a decline of 87%. This is simply JobKeeper income of AUD 4.5 million reported in the prior period. For your analysis, you would discount the JobKeeper income in assessing the underlying business performance. Taking the focus back to the payments business, if you could please turn to slide 10, which provides the transaction value analysis. We started the financial year with New South Wales already in lockdown and a significant number of merchants not transacting for over 60% of the reporting period. In a normal period, New South Wales constitutes around 37% of Tyro's transaction value. Furthermore, Victoria was in lockdown for 73 days in the period. Victoria normally accounts for over 23% of Tyro's transaction value.
Despite the challenges faced by our approximately 61,000 merchants, total transaction value grew by 31% to AUD 16.8 billion. Breaking the AUD 15.8 billion down, the Tyro core book grew 10% to AUD 13.3 billion compared to AUD 12.1 billion in the comparative period, while the Bendigo Alliance contributed AUD 2.5 billion, which was in line with our announcement in 2020. Taking a segue into the gross profit analysis, which is on page 11 and 12. The gross profit metric is the main indicator of our business growth as revenue shifts with underlying card mix and its associated direct costs. Recapping, the payments gross profit was up 25% to AUD 68 million on a statutory basis and 20% on a normalized basis to AUD 65 million.
We focus on normalized gross profit as this provides a more accurate reflection of the underlying business performance. Given approximately 16% of the transaction value processed was in the Bendigo portfolio, it will provide greater clarity to separately analyze both books. The Tyro core book is analyzed against the merchant acquiring fee or MAF margin graphed on the right. This metric directly correlates with the transaction value and excludes non-transactional related income, like terminal rental. As you can see, the MAF margin declined from 36 basis points in the H1 of FY 2021 to 33 basis points in the H2 and then to 32 basis points in the H1 of FY 2022. In comparing both the first halves only, card mix remains fairly stable.
Debit cards in aggregate, including eftpos, decreased by 0.4% with a total of 61.4% of transaction value in the PCP to 61% in the current half. Increases in direct costs across the board in both scheme and interchange fees drove up dilution of just over two -basis points. Such cost increases, when they occur, trigger a portfolio margin review generally on an annual basis. Through this review process, we decide on any pricing changes, giving consideration to the impact on our customers. With the impact of COVID on a significant portion of our core merchant base, we decided to defer fee increases to the H2 of the financial year. The MAF margin is the main driver of the payments gross profit.
However, given the significant contribution from terminal rental income, it is worth calling out that as a proportion of transaction value, rental income remains steady at 8.3 basis points for both the halves. We supported merchants by providing terminal rental waivers of AUD 1 million respectively in each half. These waivers have not been normalized. With that, therefore, the Tyro core business contributed AUD 13.3 billion of transaction value at a gross margin of 41 basis points, contributing AUD 54.5 billion in payments gross profit. The remaining AUD 2.5 billion was contributed by the Bendigo book, which is separately analyzed on page 12. The gross margin on the Bendigo book after the gross profit share was 39.4 basis points, contributing AUD 10 million in gross profit to the group.
The transaction value contributed by the Bendigo book was in line with our annualized expectation. With that, if you turn to page 13, and I'll walk through the expense analysis for the half year. We reported total operating expenses of AUD 65.3 million, up from AUD 52.7 million in the PCP, an increase of AUD 12.6 million. The drivers for the half year compared to the H1 of FY 2021 are that the current half year reports as a group, while the comparative was Tyro core only. I will go through the Medipass and the Bendigo costs shortly, but firstly, the Tyro core. Given the impact of the first wave of COVID in calendar year 2020, Tyro employees were not provided with salary increases. Salary reviews only became effective again on the first of January 2021.
Competition for talent across multiple disciplines, but particularly in the technology space, has been widely acknowledged. We also experienced the same wage pressure and have been prudent but realistic. Given 46% of our permanent headcount are in technology, our salary increase has been skewed higher than average. The annual salary review cycle has been moved to January going forward, and therefore the next round of reviews will be effective 1st January 2022, which you should factor into your forecasts. Given the competitiveness in the tech market, we continue to supplement capacity with technology partners where needed, so as to maintain our velocity of delivery. This method also provides us greater options to deal with local competition and wage inflation. Finally, although not a significant jump, marketing costs increased by AUD half a million.
Breaking down the expenses in turn and taking last year's AUD 52.7 million as the starting point, costs to support the Bendigo Alliance were an additional AUD 4.7 million for the half year. When we announced the alliance to the market, we indicated annual personnel costs of approximately AUD 6.7 million. In addition, other costs under our business model are approximately 30%, so we expected to incur AUD 9 million in total to support this portfolio per annum. We're therefore tracking 4% higher than expected. Given this is the first year of transition, there is some overlap in the operating costs, including contractors for initial transitioning. I would expect the operating costs to come in line with expectations once the transition is complete. Nevertheless, the higher costs are offset by the better than expected margin on the book for the half year.
Medipass was acquired on 31st May 2021 as part of our strategic investment in the health segment. A total of AUD 2.3 million in operating costs was incurred for this business. The majority of these costs were personnel-related. Medipass had 26 permanent employees at balance date, of which half were in technology-related roles. The Tyro core business added 56 net new permanent headcount over the year, adding AUD 2.4 million to the cost base. Salary increases and annualization contributed around 1.5 million to the cost base. General growth-related costs such as software licensing, communication costs for the increased fleet, training, as well as travel costs grew around AUD 1.5 million, while we incurred consulting and other costs of around another 0.5 million.
Finally, our lending and non-lending losses decreased by half a million AUD dollars from AUD 1 million in the PCP. This was a pleasing result again, considering the challenges our customers face and the unsecured nature of our lending product. The business is at a stage where we are able to demonstrate operating leverage expressed as a proportion of transaction value. Group normalized gross profit was 43- basis points compared to group operating expenses of 41- basis points. This was notwithstanding firstly that Medi pass costs of AUD 2.3 million are included within the expense base without a material gross profit contribution in the current period. Medi pass is an early-stage business and part of our strategic investment in health and is expected to provide significant contribution to EBITDA in the future years.
Secondly, that our transaction values were compressed during the period with New South Wales and Victoria locked down for a significant portion of the half year. Minimal additional operating expenses would have been reported if the half year was not disrupted and transaction value growth was higher than the reported AUD 15.8 billion. Moving to the next slide, page 14. JobKeeper income of AUD 4.5 million was included in our EBITDA in the PCP and was not normalized previously. For the current reporting period, however, the underlying performance is best seen by adjusting JobKeeper out from the H1 of FY 2021.
Therefore, to compare performance on a like-for-like basis, the combined Tyro and Bendigo book, being the material contributors to gross profit for the current period, grew 15% from AUD 4 million in the PCP to AUD 4.6 million in the current half. As mentioned, Medipass is an early-stage business and therefore its income only partially offset its operating expenses of AUD 2.3 million, resulting in an EBITDA of -AUD 1.8 million. EBITDA for the group, therefore, was positive AUD 2.8 million for the current half. In summarizing the performance and recapping my initial takeaways, sustained strong growth was demonstrated, notwithstanding lockdowns in New South Wales and Victoria for a significant portion of the year.
Our strong capital position allowed us to carry on investing in our business and supporting our merchants over what was a challenging external environment. Finally, our renewed focus on the banking products. That was a review of the financial performance. If you now turn to page 24, I will provide a quick update on the balance sheet and liquidity analysis. Our continued growth was underwritten by a strong balance sheet. We had AUD 157 million in total cash and investments compared to close to AUD 173 million at June. Part of the decrease was a timing difference of AUD 6 million in additional scheme receivables compared to June, given a seasonally high transaction value processed on New Year's Eve. This was fully settled in the first banking day in January.
Other than this, cash outflows were offset by an increase in customer deposits of AUD 25 million. I will go through the cash flow in a bit more detail on page 25. In notable call-outs, property, plant, and equipment carrying value increased by AUD 8.7 million, net of depreciation of AUD 5.8 million. Significant capital expenditures included additions of AUD 6.7 million for terminals and AUD 7.3 million for fit-outs and construction for our new office premises at 55 Market Street. The other significant impact of the new premises is the recognition of a right-of-use asset of AUD 33.6 million with a corresponding lease liability commitment.
In terms of our banking balances, loans to merchants grew to AUD 21.1 million after originating AUD 36.2 million over the half year, while customer deposits increased from AUD 75.5 million at June to AUD 100.8 million at December. Finally, intangibles and the corresponding commissions payable to Bendigo in relation to the Tyro Bendigo alliance both reduced as a result of amortization and the payment of AUD 4.4 million in commissions respectively over the period. Moving on to the cash flow on page 25, quarantining the banking flows. Operating cash flows were -AUD 26.4 million compared to -AUD 4.8 million in the comparative half. The cash flow for the period can be summarized as follows. EBITDA of AUD 2.8 million, as discussed.
Terminal purchases of AUD 8.8 million, of which AUD 2 million were payments from the previous period. Remediation-related payments of AUD 4 million, and Bendigo transitional costs of AUD 2.5 million. Those give a net cash outflow of AUD 13 million. There is an additional AUD 13 million, which is a timing difference in lieu of scheme receivables, where we have pre-funded the merchants, and the funds were received from the schemes on the first banking day in January. Merchants without Tyro Smart Account are part of this, where they receive same-day settlements over a longer trading day, which is an appreciated value proposition for our deposit account. The only other notable call-out on the cash flow is the capital expenditure on our new premises, where we have spent AUD 7.8 million in the half.
Total capital expenditure remains within the guidance of AUD 34 million we gave at our FY 2021 results call. Finally, turning to page 26 for an analysis of our liquidity and capital positions. As an unrestricted ADI, Tyro is able to raise deposits as a stable and competitive source of funding. Our liquidity ratios are well ahead of those required by APRA, with adequate liquidity to fund our growth. At balance date, we held cash, including term deposits of AUD 86.7 million, as well as financial investments of AUD 70.7 million, giving total cash and financial investments of AUD 157 million. Our capital position remains strong at 45%.
Our capital position has allowed us to pursue both organic growth as well as inorganic growth with the Bendigo alliance and a strategic investment into health with the purchase of Medipass. These were already reflected in our capital ratio of 73% at 30th June 2021. Since June, a total of AUD 40 million has been recognized with respect to our new offices at 55 Market Street. AUD 33 million of this is a non-cash recognition of a right of use asset, capitalized based on a lease term going out to January 2031. Our lending book increased from AUD 15 million at 30th June 2021 to AUD 21 million at 31st December 2021. Lending originations are beginning to meet targets as we exit out of COVID, and our capital position will allow us to continue pursuing growth of our lending portfolio.
Finally, regulatory losses for the period, which excludes share-based payments, the amortization of Bendigo and other intangibles, was AUD 6.7 million, which was a deduction to our total capital. The regulatory loss can be reconciled to a statutory loss of AUD 18.1 million reported in the income statement. While our potential capital ratio is not something I can disclose, the 45% at 31 December 2021 was multiples above our APRA requirement. Robbie, with that, I will pass it back to you for a trading update.
Thanks, Prav. We can now turn to slide 28. In terms of outlook, while we're not providing specific profit guidance for the H2, we do take the opportunity to highlight a few of our key trading stats, and have to note that these data points are not audited. Overall, though, our start for the H2 has seen our strong momentum continue. With lockdowns abating, along with government and businesses encouraging the return of workers to the nation's CBD, we consider the outlook to be positive for our predominantly card-present payments operation. The particular highlights thus far in the H2 are that we've maintained our transaction value momentum with AUD 4.5 billion in transactions processed from the first of January to the eighteenth of February, representing a 40% uplift.
For January, our transaction value growth was up 35% to AUD 2.7 billion. For January, our payments business gross profit, allowing for the gross profit share payable under the Bendigo Bank alliance, was up 24% to AUD 11.1 million. Loan originations for February are also performing very strongly, with AUD 5.8 million in loans written to date. In terms of outlook, it is an exciting time to be at Tyro. We've achieved a lot over the last two years, but it's the opportunity in front of us that remains exciting. We have a mix of features and products in train that will continue to build out our payment-centric ecosystem.
Products such as the Tyro Go card reader will be in the field shortly and will open up new verticals, target the micro-merchants, for example, and will eventually provide a queue-busting solution for larger retailers. We're looking to roll out our Tyro Go card reader in the half, initially to our Bendigo Alliance merchants. We are currently building out our next-generation terminal, which is an Android-based device, which will supplement our fleet and present some exciting opportunities for the future, including an eftpos capability. We continue to look at ways to extend our merchant cash advance product to make it available to a wider cohort of Tyro merchants, and also looking at the quantum of the loans that we're prepared to provide.
In health, with the Medipass digital claiming capabilities, including state and federal compensatory funders, we have an opportunity in combination with our existing health solutions to create the leading unified claiming and payments platform for Australian healthcare practitioners. We've created IP, both technical and commercial, in creating our payments alliance model for both Bendigo Bank and Telstra, which has potential application to other market opportunities. This is an area we remain keenly interested in exploring. Finally, we continue to have an appetite for bolt-on acquisitions, whether large or small, which present an avenue to gain scale, leverage our platform or capabilities, enhance our market position, or supplement our ecosystem. With that ends the formal presentation, and we'll move on to Q&A.
Your first question comes from Brendan Carrig from Macquarie. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions from me. Prav, maybe just starting on the deferred merchant pricing review. Can you just clarify when does that usually take place or what's the, I guess, the catalyst to invoke those reviews? Generally speaking, would that result in improved margin performance?
Hey, good morning, Brendan. Yeah, good question. It purely depends on our portfolio review. Our portfolio is broken down into two types of priced merchants, Cost Plus and normalized and other. For Cost Plus, effectively any transaction-related pricing change that the schemes do by interchange fees, etc., get passed straight through. It impacts our margin. Sorry, it impacts our MSFs, but does not impact our margin because the costs go up and down in line with the MSF. We do our portfolio review quite regularly and every six months in detail. If there's a significant change in the underlying cost that has not been passed through up or down, we make a decision whether pricing change is needed. We do that at least once per annum.
The last couple of years has been a little bit of an abnormality with COVID impacts on our merchant base. We would have normally done this in October last year. We've deferred it to March in the coming year.
Was that off the back of the scheme fees being lower, but in that instance, would that not potentially result in your review, meaning that your merchants that aren't on Cost Plus getting or paying a lower fee?
We would make a decision internally. If there are other costs that we expect are coming through which will offset those decreased costs, we would potentially not make any change at that point. Typically, it's when costs go up that we actually price the cost increases.
Okay. That's clear. The second one is just on the payments margin for January. If I'm using the numbers that you've provided, it looks like a 40.7 basis point margin, which compares to 41 basis points in the half based on the slide. Can you just explain the differences between those two margins, as I would've thought that with the Bendigo mix playing a bigger part in the H1 2022 margin, that actually the January margin might be a little higher than the average for the half?
I wouldn't have expected the January margin to be higher. There's a number of variables that play into this. Firstly, December and January are very different months, together with card mix and transaction value. In December, we generally see our largest transaction value for the year. We generally see higher average ticket prices, and we generally see the margin to be slightly lower because of flat fees, for example, terminal rental being diluted over a larger transaction base. January, on the other hand, has a lot of merchants which do not transact and actually go on shut down for the month. The average ticket size is normally lower. A margin of 41% in the H1 versus 40.7% in January, I think is very comparable.
On the same logic, the December margin would be lower because there's more volumes on some fixed income. Would not the fact that January has less volumes on the same amount of fixed income result in more elevated margin?
Sure. You're comparing the H1 margins to January margins. Given New South Wales was in lockdown for 115 days and Victoria for over two months, in the half, the overall six-month margin transaction value would have been more compressed than what we would normally see.
Okay. My third question, then I'll jump back in the queue. Just on the Android terminal, replacement comments, Robbie.
Yeah.
Can you maybe give a sense as to whether you'll be replacing the entire terminal fleet, and how long you would expect that to be and if there's any price or cost per terminal that you can provide us?
Yeah. Brendan, look, no intention to replace the whole fleet in a big bang approach. The new Android terminal will be a terminal available in a portfolio. It will provide some other functionality, as I mentioned. Once it's fully developed out, it'll have MPOS capability. The intention is not to cycle out the Oxys and Yomanis in any short order. They'll continue in accordance with their normal lifespan. The model for the new Android terminal will be very much the same as the eftpos and Yomani's. They'll be on a rental basis. The only pricing difference with our terminal fleet will be when we have the Tyro Go reader in the field, which will be a unit that people purchase rather than rent.
The MPOS solution that's coming with these Android terminals, is that the one that you've been talking about for some time now, and so this is how that's going to be put to market?
Yeah. Originally, Brendan, I think you know we were looking at a PAX terminal, which we decided not to pursue. This is a different unit, different manufacturer, and the beauty of the Android solution is it enables POS partners to build out their own their POS solution onto their terminal itself. It involves working in partnership with our POS partners.
Okay, cool. Thanks. I'll leave it there. I'll jump back in the queue.
Cool. Thanks, Brendan.
Your next question comes from Michael Aspinall from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Robbie and Prav. I might just start on the interchange and scheme fees that you mentioned you delayed passing through in the H1 2022. Can you characterize kind of what those increases looked like, and how much you might not have passed through to your customers?
Yeah. If you actually just look at our, there are three reasons where margins would change. One would be if actually changing card mix, so that remains fairly stable. The other impact would be if based on the customers that we onboard. Generally, larger customers would come on board at slightly dilutive margins, but they will contribute with a higher transaction value. We had a few of those come in, so that diluted margin by about one basis point in the half year. The increase in costs was about two basis points. I would expect that the offset of that would roughly equate to that. Obviously, the actuals will move in line with the card mix going forward.
Okay. That interchange and scheme fees are up kind of 5% then from, say, 40-42, and you didn't pass that through. Is that the right way to think about it?
2.2- basis points. Yeah.
Yeah. 2- basis points. That's a math leveler.
Correct. Yeah.
Okay. Okay, cool. In terms of recovering, you made another comment that you were looking to recover scheme and interchange fee increases in the H2. Do you expect further scheme and interchange fee increases, or you're just talking about the ones that you saw in the last six months?
Yeah. These are the ones we saw in the last six months. Yeah. Look, scheme and interchange fees, they change all the time, as frequently as once every three months. We-
Mm-hmm.
Which is why we review our margins and portfolios every quarter. We do a pricing consideration every six months, and generally, we do a pricing change once a year. That would include any true-ups that we need to do for the last six months.
Okay. If interchange and scheme fee impacted margins by 2 basis points in the half just gone, are you saying that you might find a way to true up and get that margin back in the H2 of this year or H1 next year?
For the ones in the last half year? Yes.
Okay. Okay. On the annual, just on the annual merchant pricing review, I think you mentioned that will take effect in March. Is that right?
Yes.
Yeah. I mean, is there any kind of thought around potential quantum you can give us or just a kind of comment with just what a discussion we've just had?
Probably would stay away from giving forward-looking guidance other than it will be around two basis points of the overall portfolio. The reason for that, again, as I mentioned, there's other variables that come into play as well. Effectively what happens to the card mix. International borders are opening up, so transaction values, depending on when you make a call on that, will increase.
Yeah.
Unit margin would be dilutive on that, but at an incremental profitable basis. I think-
Yeah.
If you only are looking at the pricing change, I would probably be comfortable to say it will be around the 2- basis points mark.
Okay.
Other than quantifying anything else, yeah.
Yeah. That, that's really helpful. Kind of a broader picture one. How do you see inflation impacting the business? Maybe looking at kind of the revenue side and the cost side separately.
I think the main impact that it's having to us is in our cost base. Well, it has and it has the technology inflation has been a key item that's been acknowledged in the whole tech sector. We, on average, our salary increases last year were about 4% across the board. However-
Mm-hmm.
The technology space that would easily be higher than 5%, even closer to 8%-10%. Given that about 46% of our team is in that space, I would probably say our average cost would skew on the higher end. Robbie, anything else?
Yeah.
In your mind?
No. Look, Michael, yeah, look, fair to say that technology space and as we sort of pointed out, we're not Robinson Crusoe here. I think most tech dependent companies are seeing that wage inflation. I'd be sort of suggesting you're probably looking somewhere in that sort of 5% sort of mark in the technology space on average across the spectrum in the period. And as Prav called out, you know, we do our reviews from the first of January. So that's something we're in the midst of at the moment.
Okay. I mean, in terms of, say, customer behaviors, hospitality is a large component of your transaction value.
Yes.
If they're seeing kind of they're able to put through price increases for their products and you're seeing high that impact TTV, would you expect, you know, if restaurants are getting good pricing increases, and they're doing really well, that to have any impact on whether your customers may shift churn away or you think they'd be more sticky in that kind of environment? Have you put much thought around what the customer would look like in a high inflation environment?
Yeah, look, I suppose we're not anticipating a sort of super high inflation environment in our hospo space, particularly. I mean, as we see price increases, obviously we benefit from that so long as consumers keep spending. But it's not our expectation that we're going to see such increases in pricing that's going to be a deterrent to people spending as income. I think our operators are very attuned to balancing price increases and keeping their restaurants and hospitality businesses full, particularly given what they've been through in the last 12 months, 24 months.
Okay. Last one from me, and I'll let someone else have a turn. You added 56 net new employees in Tyro, the core business, in the H1. Can you give us a sense of how many you'd expect to add in the H2 of this year?
This is the increase over the same half last year, right? If you look at the breakdown, I'm getting rough figures here, about 15 of those that headcount was in the technology space. Look, I'd like to actually see that same sort of uplift in the H2 in the technical team. I mean, the challenge we've got is just actually the scarcity of talent at the moment just with the demand. There was an uplift of about 20 headcount in our customer service area, and that is partly a factor of some of our processes still requiring a bit more automation.
I'd like to see that stays fairly subdued, but we don't actually include headcount in customer service, and we actually implement some automation processes which will reduce the headcount requirements. The other area, and we have flagged this consistently over the last few years, is as we bring on more merchants, you know, our sales and marketing area will grow and you'd expect that. That's key account managers and sales team members. There are about 15-odd personnel in that space. The two areas, our engineering space and our sales marketing, I'd expect to see some growth in the H2. Customer service, we'd love to see that sort of suppressed now.
Okay, great. Thanks for that, Chris.
Cool.
Your next question comes from Bob Chen from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah.
Morning, guys. Just a follow-up to sort of that reinvestment question earlier. I mean, how are you guys thinking about that balance of you know, profitability as well as just reinvestment for growth? Like, what sort of triggers you to push that cost lever a little bit more?
Yeah. Look, good question, Bob. Look, from our point of view, and this is for a business like ours, there's a lot of growth to be had, and we want to keep pursuing that growth as aggressively as we can, but you know, looking for efficiency, and that's the balance we've always been striving to achieve. You know, if you look at the business, that sort of gross profit growth is really you know, what we're very focused on and just driving that as well as we can, and revenue growth. For us, EBITDA, we want to be EBITDA positive, but you know, it's growth, number one. It's demonstrating operating leverage, number two, and that will you know, should drive an EBITDA positive outcome. That's sort of how we're looking at the opportunity in front of us.
We don't want to not go as aggressively after the growth as we can in the environment we're in.
Okay, great. Just across the sort of different networks and, you know, obviously there's been a lot of changes in interchange and scheme fees as well. I mean, in terms of, you know, how you sort of see that develop longer term, with the New Payments Platform being a little bit more active in that area, and I think you guys have that sort of integration with PayTo as well. Like, what do you think will happen to your sort of longer term margins as all of this sort of takes shape over the next few years?
The longer term environment that we'll definitely be using the NPP for real-time account to account payments is going to be a feature. There will be costs associated with those transactions. We haven't got to a point where we sort of thought through what that looks like yet in terms of the cost profile. Probably as a general statement in relation to our book and, you know, card present transactions, as we continue to tap into larger merchants, we're going to see tighter margins on those larger merchants.
The corollary of that, I suppose, is as we now have got a product fit for the micro segment, that we should be able to more effectively serve the micro market, which comes with a better margin environment. While it is hard to answer that on a sort of five-year what does it look like perspective. There will be more ways to pay. They will have different cost models associated with them. As we evolve our offer and we start tapping more large, that will have an impact on margin. As we get better in the micro space, that will also bring some higher margin business as well. I don't know, Prav, whether you've got anything to add on that one?
No, it's exactly what you said, Robbie. Just where you're trading, the main drivers of margin are threefold. It is the size of the customers and the unit margins that come on board. I think traditionally we've had smaller merchants, which come in, they contribute lower transaction value, and they come in at a higher unit margin. Over the last four years or so, we are actually onboarding much larger merchants who are coming at sharper margins, but incrementally profitable. I would expect to keep seeing that as bigger merchants come onto our books, which is great because we've got to balance the profitability and the growth. Card mix is the other one, and it's an obvious one.
The card mix in the last two years has been fairly abnormal compared to the previous years. Our international transactions have been about less than 1%. The borders are opening now. When exactly that kicks in would be an open question. As that happens, our MSF will go up, our unit margins will dilute, our transaction value will go up incrementally, but our unit margins will dilute. It doesn't incur any additional operating costs, though. They're all set up. The MSF actually comes through with the interchange fees and scheme fees. Then the third one is just the interchange and scheme fee that underlies these cards, which as I mentioned, they're fairly complex. They come through every quarter. Some are transactional, some are flat base.
It's our business model is just review our portfolio on a regular basis and reprice as needed.
Okay, great. Just last one for me. Just on the competitive front, I mean, have you guys seen much movement from competition from the big banks? I mean, CBA has been talking about a reinvestment for a little while now. Are you guys seeing any evidence of that in the market yet?
Look, I think, Bob, as we always say, if you don't like competition, it shouldn't be in payments. The competition and competitive landscape is as competitive as it has ever been. We continue to perform well. We continue to see really good merchant signups. As I sort of called out, we're averaging 1,200 new merchants per month, which is where we want to be. We're still capturing share. We're still growing strongly, notwithstanding all the competition that's coming our way. It's the nature of the market, and we've got no expectation that abates.
All right. Great. Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from Cameron Hockett from Wilsons. Please go ahead.
Hey, Robbie, Prav and Giovanni. Can I just confirm you hear me okay?
Yeah. Loud and clear, Cameron.
Thanks. Well, hope you're all well. Just one quick one from me. Just noticed in the pack this time, there wasn't a kind of monthly breakdown of debit percentage of TTV. I think it was mentioned for the half overall, it was around 61%. It's kind of broadly in line with the prior six months. Just kind of wondering your guys' thinking around this allocation going forward, particularly, you know, given we're likely going to come into, you know, a rising interest rate environment, which might be detrimental to credit card uptake or a resurgence. Thanks.
Hi, Cameron. It's Giovanni here. Just to be clear, you're referring to the monthly breakdown in terms of the split between debit card, credit card?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Look, I mean, as Prav indicated previously, you know, with international borders still being shut, you know, only recently opening up now, there hasn't been a significant change in any of that. So look, from our point of view, there was no real reason to put that into the pack. It stayed as it was in the past. I think in terms of the basis point margins that we indicated with our call, as well as with Bendigo, that's probably the best guidance that you can take in terms of where margins are at the moment for the different card types.
All right. Thank you.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Your next question comes from Elijah Mayer from CLSA. Please go ahead.
Good morning, guys. Thanks for the questions. Just firstly, can you guys quantify the extent that you're sort of offering terminal relief in terms of what was there in the H1 and whether that's sort of continuing still at the moment?
Yeah. Elijah, it was AUD 1 million in relief in the half and similar quantum in the prior half.
That's still ongoing at the moment?
It's pretty much phased out now. We're back to normal sort of operations.
Yeah. I guess if we're just sort of looking again at just OpEx as a whole, obviously the wage increases sort of coming through a year and the expectation that they're sort of coming through again in January, how should we sort of think about that H2, I guess OpEx level? I mean, I know there's probably an expectation that you'd increase sales and marketing a little bit more as we sort of open up. Can you sort of maybe give a little bit more color on the expectations there?
Yeah. H2 we'll have the salary reviews that we've put through now on a calendar year basis. You know, as we sort of flagged, you were sort of thinking around about sort of 5% mark for REM increases. That was probably on average, that's probably 4.5%-5% is probably where you'd sit in that vicinity. In terms of headcount, we haven't got a number out there at the moment. As I said, look, I'd like to be putting on more engineers if I could, mate. We'll just see how we go there. In terms of key account, we could see a little bit of growth in that space as well.
We haven't put a forecast number out on headcount to the H2. you probably can't pay very much for them.
That's okay. That's helpful. Then just with merchant applications calling out sort of 7.5 or 7,400 brand-new applications and 1,200 per month, can you sort of break down, I guess, how many are coming via Bendigo and how many are coming via Tyro? The
Yeah. Look, again, we haven't given those splits. I would not be able to sort of give you the precision there. I can say that the lion's share is coming through core Tyro channels. Bendigo Front Book is contributing, but it's you know, single-digit amount of that growth. Probably the best way of putting it at the moment. We expect that will continue. Yeah.
I guess if you're referring to or referencing maybe FY 2021, I think you're averaging around 1,000 merchants per month. Is it safe to say sort of Tyro is sort of still above that? Or is it sort of broadly similar?
Yeah. Yeah. No, core Tyro is, yeah, above 1,000 mark, for sure.
Okay. Excellent. Then maybe just one final one, I guess, in a general, I guess, market sense. Can you give us an indication, I guess, from what you're seeing from your perspective in terms of what contribution, I guess, cash payments are making versus card payments for specifically the hospitality and retail, obviously, significant step up since COVID? I just want to sort of see, I guess, how close that is to full.
Yeah. Look, we don't have that because we're operating in the card space. We don't get the sort of full perspective of what the cash components might be going to a particular merchant. There is some data that the RBA puts out. It's a little bit dated now. We sort of show the cash component. That hasn't been updated since we last said it. Look, we could probably certainly shoot that to you if you haven't got it. Yeah, look, in terms of giving a better visibility in the last couple of months, just what the cash card split is, it's not really something we've got visibility over.
Yeah, that's fair enough. I thought there might have been some insight from the merchants because it is quite delayed some of that data. But, that's it from me. Thanks, guys.
Cool. Thanks.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Cooke for closing remarks.
Thanks, Emily. Look, I'd just like to thank everybody for their time this morning, and, we'll close the call.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.