Hello, and welcome to the Tyro Payments FY 23 results briefing call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, again, press star one. I will now turn the conference over to Jon Davey, CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining our call this morning. It's a great pleasure to present our first full year results since my appointment as CEO. I started as the CEO in the shadow of a change of control transaction. It has been an action-packed year, but I've loved my time in the job, and importantly, the business has made good progress, laying the foundations for what we believe is a new era at Tyro. I'm joined today by our Chief Financial Officer, Prav Pala, and we also have our GM of Investor Relations, Giovanni Rizzo, with us today. The investor presentation that I will refer to today was released this morning and is available on the ASX website and on the Tyro Investor Center.
It is also available on this morning's webinar, and I ask that you scroll to the respective slides as Prav and I speak to them. I'll talk to you this morning about our results for the financial year 2023, and the progress we have made in delivering our plan, our focus on efficient and sustainable growth, and the strong performance of our core business. Prav will then take us through our financial results in more detail before I provide an update on trading for the period up to August 25, and guidance on key financial metrics, financial year 2024. We will then have Q&A. I will now provide a business update and direct you to slide 5 of the investor presentation. There are three key things that I want to highlight to you today. Firstly, we are delivering against our plan.
We've made strong progress against our three key strategic priorities: enhancing our product portfolio, pricing optimization, and operating efficiency. New products and new digital experiences have been launched. Pricing optimization activities are underway and delivering margin improvements, and committed cost reduction initiatives have been completed. Secondly, we are growing sustainably. The implementation of the cost reduction program announced last October, together with an ongoing focus on cost management, has improved efficiency and resulted in a strong uplift in EBITDA margin. FY 2024 will see further improvements as we continue to focus on leaner, more disciplined operations. Finally, the core Tyro business has performed strongly. We have seen diversification in the mix of industries we support, particularly in health and the emerging services vertical. Churn has increased.
This can be attributed to both a reduction in the number of Bendigo powered by Tyro merchants, following completion of the transition to the Tyro payment gateway, and a smaller number of merchants who are closing their businesses. I will now direct you to slide 6 of the presentation to discuss FY 2023 performance highlights. I'm pleased to report that we've made significant progress in our ambition to align strong growth with a shift to profitability. The year was highlighted by growth across several key metrics, including the value of payments processed, the number of merchants we have added, and in the value of loans that have been originated. Transaction value growth has been strong, up 25% on the corresponding period. We saw a 14% increase in the number of core Tyro merchants.
That growth has, however, been partially offset by churn in our Bendigo powered by Tyro merchants, following completion of the transition from the Bendigo infrastructure to the Tyro payment gateway. This has resulted in net growth of 8%. Loan originations were up 51% to AUD 149.7 million. Gross profit of AUD 193.2 million for the year is 30% higher than last year. Our strong focus on operating expense management, together with our growth, has helped deliver AUD 42.3 million worth of EBITDA, up from AUD 10.7 million, and almost 4x the corresponding period. We have delivered a statutory net profit after tax of AUD 6 million, and AUD 5.7 million of positive free cash flow, our first as an ASX-listed company. These are strong results.
While transaction value exceeded the top end of guidance provided to the market at the 2022 results call by just 1.5%, gross profit is 6.7% higher, and EBITDA is 45% higher. We've also achieved operating leverage of 78.1% against an initial guidance of 85%. As we became more comfortable with performance, we informed the market and provided updates to guidance in October, January, and May. I now ask you to turn to slide 7 of the presentation, where I will discuss progress in delivering against our strategic priorities. Our results were underpinned by growth and the progress we have made in enhancing our product portfolio and by pricing, optimization, and disciplined cost management. We have made good progress in enhancing our product portfolio....
As demand for acceptance of digital payments has grown, we have seen merchant needs for cost-effective, flexible payments products increase. Our Tyro Go card reader and the Tyro BYO Tap to Pay on iPhone solutions meet this need. The Tyro Go card reader is a portable device that connects via Bluetooth to a merchant's smartphone. Tyro BYO for iOS was released in partnership with Apple's Australian launch of Tap to Pay on iPhone. Launched in November and May respectively, existing merchants are using these solutions as a queue buster and as a way of accepting payments while on the move. We have also seen take-up by new merchants in our existing verticals and in new industry verticals, as they look for solutions that supplement a terminal or provide a more flexible terminal alternative.
Both solutions are quick to set up, with existing merchants simply needing to download and log into the Tyro App to start accepting payments. New merchants can go through a digital onboarding process and be ready to accept payments in about 10 minutes. We launched our Tyro Pro terminal in November 2022. The large-screen Android terminal is a next-generation device that allows us to develop software-based products and features specific to the verticals in which we operate and build merchant-branded experiences. Merchant feedback has been really positive, and we will rapidly scale an integrated version of this solution in the second quarter of this financial year. Having identified opportunities to improve margins through smarter pricing and better merchant pricing solutions, we've made good progress on several pricing optimization initiatives. We've introduced a pilot release of no-cost EFTPOS to complement our existing surcharging solution.
These products provide merchants with the ability to recover the cost of their merchant acquiring fee. They open opportunities for Tyro in new segments of the market, and they provide an alternative way of reducing merchant costs without reducing payments acceptance fees. We've also seen increased take-up of our least-cost routing solution, Tap and Save. We started the year with 31% of merchants utilizing this functionality. This has increased to 54%. Tap and Save routes debit transactions through the cheapest scheme rails, ensuring that merchants and their customers receive the benefit of lower transaction costs. These initiatives and a broader focus on margin optimization have had a positive impact, with payments gross profit margin on the core Tyro book increasing from 41.9 basis points to 42.5 basis points over the year. We've also made good progress on operating efficiency.
Our cost reduction program, announced in October, delivered AUD 7 million worth of savings and AUD 11 million in annualized savings from FY 2024. With a leaner, more focused organization, we've been able to prioritize initiatives that will position us for the future while delivering short-term operating leverage and profitability. In November, we launched a digital sales and onboarding process via Tyro.com and through our partner channels. In the second half, approximately 40% of all applications were processed via this channel, requiring minimal human intervention. This has provided cost savings and delivered a significantly better merchant experience. In April, we introduced a new simplified operating model. These changes saw my leadership team reduced from 13 to 7 and resulted in an expanded remit for many of these executives. Over the year, we've had 4 appointments to our executive team. Paul Keen joined in August as Chief Technology Officer.
Paul has more than 20 years' leadership experience in corporate and startup businesses, including Qantas, Airtasker, RedBalloon, and Dick Smith . Dominic White joined as Chief Product Officer, bringing more than 25 years' market-leading experience in designing, developing, and launching payments products for domestic acquirers, global payments businesses, and payment schemes in both Australia and Europe. Deanne Bannatyne joined as Chief Growth Officer. Dee brings 20 years' payments experience in areas including risk and compliance, sales, servicing, marketing, and digital. She has worked with global payments businesses, domestic Australian banks, and with a global payment card scheme. Finally, Adrian Perillo has been appointed CEO of our health business. Adrian joined Tyro as part of our acquisition of Medipass in 2021. He has 20 years' experience in digital and health businesses across a range of functions that include marketing, product, finance, and business operations.
Can I ask you now please, to turn to slide 8? Efficient growth is critical to our plans. While gross profit has increased by 30% for the year, our operating leverage has improved from 92.8% to 78%, and we have seen a decrease of AUD 500,000 in operating expenses half-on-half. We are very focused on delivering further savings and will achieve these by simplifying and digitizing internal, partner, and merchant processes. For our merchants and for our partners, these changes will deliver improved onboarding and merchant service experiences. Automated onboarding for payments and in-health automated onboarding for private health claiming were both implemented in 2023. Several other initiatives will follow in the new financial year. We are now confident that we have achieved a level of scale that allows us to drive growth without a corresponding increase in our operating expense base.
Can we now turn to slide 9? I'll now turn to merchant growth. For today's presentation, we have distinguished performance of the core Tyro business from our Bendigo powered by Tyro merchants. While both merchant bases use the same product and receive similar post-lead generation sales, onboarding, and servicing experiences, the merchant acquisition channels are very different. Leads for Bendigo merchants are acquired through the Bendigo branch network and through their business banking network. Tyro has a more diverse set of acquisition channels, including our direct sales channels, our POS partners, several independent sales organization or ISO partners, and our retail partners, including Telstra and Australia Post. Tyro direct channels account for 42% of sales, with other third-party channels generating the additional 58%. Through 2023, the core Tyro business has performed well. Merchant numbers were up 14%.
We received more than 15,000 new applications, up 20% from last year. Health saw an increase in merchant applications of 36%, and the emerging services vertical saw an increase in applications of 42%. Though Tyro has grown well, the number of Bendigo powered by Tyro merchants has decreased by 10%. The transition of merchants to the Tyro platform proved to be a trigger for churn, though much of this churn has been in no or low transacting merchants. We have processed 17,002 Bendigo powered by Tyro applications. Though merchant numbers have fallen, we have maintained transaction value growth at 3% for the year, to a total of AUD 5.4 billion. The Bendigo partnership is very important to us. It is earnings accretive and remains critical in giving the scale that has allowed us to drive operating leverage.
With the merchant transition now complete, we are actively working with the Bendigo team as part of their business and agribusiness rebuild to drive front book growth. This is a priority for both teams. If you could now turn to slide 10. By merchant number, hospitality remains our largest industry vertical, with 33% of total merchants, followed by health with 31%. Over the past 12 months, the number of health merchants has increased by 24%. Our emerging services vertical has grown by 21%, hospitality has grown by 9%, and retail by 5%. Growth has been achieved through our focus on the specific product and feature needs of merchants in these categories.
For example, our acquisition of the digital payments and claiming business, Medipass, in 2021, has allowed us to build a fully featured health solution that supports general practitioners, medical specialists, and allied health professionals for their in-practice, online, and at-home payments and claiming needs. Integrations to funders that support digital claims for traffic accidents, workers' compensation, private health, and Medicare payments are unique and have allowed us to grow in a significant and growing part of the non-discretionary spend category. Before I hand over to Prav to provide more information on our financial results, I ask you to turn to slide 11 of the investor presentation for an update on our banking products and services. I have previously discussed the upside we believe exists to deepen our merchant relationships through the provision of banking products.
Our data does highlight that customers that use Tyro deposit and lending products are more satisfied and significantly less likely to churn. Total loan originations of AUD 149.7 million were 51% up on the prior year, and we averaged AUD 3 million in lending per week. Our gross profit from banking of AUD 8.6 million was up from AUD 5.2 million, and lending losses of AUD 2.9 million, or 1.9% of originations, were well within risk tolerances. We believe that our lending product that sees loans repaid with a percentage of daily takings and an average loan tenure of a relatively short six months, provides a good level of risk mitigation in the event of further economic downturn. I will now hand over to Prav to take us through our financial results.
Thank you, Jon, and welcome to everyone on the call today. I am now on slide number 13. The financials for the year continued on the same theme delivered in the first half. We had strong growth in gross profit, driven by both a higher transaction value processed in the year as well as active margin management. We further improved our EBITDA margin. In the second half of the year, we realized the full impact of the cost reduction program that we had announced in October last year. All this led to a positive free cash flow generated for the full year. More specifically, we delivered gross profit of AUD 193.2 million for FY 2023.
Gross profit is the best measure of our growth, and this was up 30% year-on-year, as we grew our payments portfolio and managed margins despite changes in card mix. While the result was driven by more than 17,000 new applications received during the year and higher margins over a larger portfolio, there was also a favorable impact from softer comparatives for part of the year. As you will recall, New South Wales and Victoria were significantly impacted by COVID for the first three months last year. A 30% increase in gross profit, while keeping a disciplined approach to cost management, resulted in a very strong EBITDA for the year. We report EBITDA of AUD 42.3 million, up from AUD 10.7 million in FY 2022.
This represents an EBITDA margin of 22%, allowing us to now benchmark against our global peers as we start to demonstrate the economic benefits of scale. Our focus over the last 12 months has shifted very much to generating free cash flow, and we achieved positive free cash flow of AUD 5.7 million for the full year. This was the first year we generated net cash inflows since listing, even after incurring one-off payments of AUD 2.9 million in relation to takeover discussions, as well as AUD 1.3 million in termination payments as part of the cost reduction program. The AUD 5.7 million positive free cash flow compares to AUD 34 million negative free cash flow in the last financial year, which effectively means cash generation increased by close to AUD 40 million within a year.
I will now move on to slide 14 to discuss our gross profit by segment, starting with our payments business. As I mentioned, we reported total gross profit of AUD 193.2 million for FY 2023. 92% of this was contributed by the payments business, which generated AUD 177.4 million, up 25% from the previous year, reflecting the 25% increase in transaction value. The growth was driven by a number of factors, both within and outside of our control. Tyro recorded the highest ever number of new applications in FY 2023, closing the year at over 17,000 new applications. This helped us to continue growing our overall merchant base, despite the reduction in the Bendigo merchant number and the impacts of the economic downturn, especially on some of our smaller merchants.
Secondly, we reported transaction value growth of 37% for the first half of the year, as the comparative half was impacted by COVID, with both New South Wales and Victoria being in extended lockdowns. Normally, these states represent around 60% of our transaction value. Finally, while we had forecasted for economic growth to slow, we did not see this until much later in the financial year. Discretionary spend did not reduce to the extent that we had expected, while inflation had a positive impact on the overall transaction value processed. Netting both of these, the average transaction size processed increased by 2.2%, up from AUD 41.80 in FY 2022 to AUD 42.72 in the current year. These factors resulted in us processing a record AUD 42.6 billion in transaction value.
The Tyro core book represented AUD 37.2 billion of this amount, representing a growth rate of 28%. At a five-year CAGR of 26%, we outpaced overall market growth by five times. In analyzing this performance for the Tyro core book, our hospitality vertical continued to be our strongest performer. At AUD 18.3 billion, it comprised 43% of the transaction value and demonstrated the strongest growth rate of 37% to the prior year. The retail vertical processed AUD 10.3 billion, up 14% from the previous year. In line with household spending data seen throughout the year, it was not surprising that the retail vertical was the most impacted in terms of reduced discretionary spend. The health vertical, while comparatively small, performed particularly strongly, growing 34% year-on-year.
In absolute dollar terms, the vertical grew by AUD 1.4 billion, marginally exceeding the growth in retail, our second-largest core vertical. Spending in health proved highly resilient to a softness in the external economy. In addition, the Bendigo book contributed AUD 5.4 billion in transaction value for the year, marginally up from AUD 5.2 billion in the prior year. With the transition of Bendigo merchants now materially completed, we would expect the portfolio to stabilize going forward as we eliminate disruptions to these merchants. The commission attributable to Bendigo on this book was AUD 8.1 million, which is deducted from statutory gross profit to calculate normalized gross profit. The payments business in total, therefore, contributed AUD 177.4 million in gross profit.
Driven by an increase of 25% in transaction value and a higher margin over a larger portfolio. The Tyro core gross margin increased from 41.9 basis points last year to 42.5 basis points this year. Active pricing optimization drove the improvement in margin, despite the changes in card mix over the year, as international transactions increased. Slide 15 provides an analysis of the margin trends of the Tyro core book, which I will now go through. Taking each line at a time, the merchant service fee, or MSF, is the price the merchant pays to Tyro for the provision of payment services. Depending on the pricing type, this may or may not include terminal rental costs. Three key reasons the MSF would move are, firstly, card mix.
As an example, higher costing card types like international cards would increase the MSF, while cheaper transactions like scheme debit and EFTPOS would decrease the MSF. Secondly, repricing the merchant would have a direct impact on MSF. And finally, the partnership model the merchant has come through. As we broaden our partnership capabilities, we're able to offer either a profit share model or a wholesale model, whereby a partner controls the price to the end merchant, while Tyro receives an agreed margin. The MSF for the year increased by 7 basis points, and this was largely driven by an increase in the international card mix. As you can see on the right, as the business normalized closer to its pre-COVID levels, the international card mix more than doubled from 1.1% in FY 2022 to 2.6% in FY 2023.
4.6 basis points of the MSF increase was related to this mix change, either as passing on the costs to cost- plus merchants or price changes to recover costs, while 2.4 basis points was related to margin-driven price ranges. As you would recall from our previous presentations, the higher MSF does not necessarily translate to a higher margin. International cards, being the highest MSF at around 2.45%, contributes almost no net margin. Offering all card types is simply part of running our payments business. As part of our pricing optimization programs, we have been working to minimize the dilutive effects of increased international business. Explaining the remaining margin lines, the bottom light blue line shows the net merchant acquiring fee, or net MAC.
The net MAC correlates to the total transaction value process and is calculated by deducting the interchange fees, scheme fees, and partner commissions from the MSF. The green line shows the gross payments margin, which adds terminal rental income to the net MAC, and therefore does not fully correlate to the overall transaction value. The net MAC on the Tyro core book improved year on year by 1.2 basis points, while gross margin improved by 0.6 basis points. The increase in both these metrics, despite an increase in international card mix over a much larger base, is a great result for the business, showing our ability to manage margins within the payments portfolio. In addition to payments, our banking and investment income contributed smaller but meaningful profits. These are shown on slide 16.
Our banking business comprises a merchant cash advance product, a transaction account, and term deposit accounts. The merchant cash advance product is a short-term loan product, allowing merchants to conveniently supplement their cash flow requirements at a set fee. The transaction account and term deposit accounts provide us with an efficient and stable source of funding. We originated AUD 149.7 million in loans over the year, an increase of 51.1% to the prior year. Our banking business generated a gross profit of AUD 8.6 million. You can see the performance of this business on the left side of the slide. AUD 8.6 million represents a return of 18.7% over an average loan balance of AUD 46 million. Lending losses were AUD 2.9 million, equating to 1.9% of originations.
Taking the lending losses off the gross profit yields a return of 12.4% on an annualized basis. While the loans are unsecured, Tyro gets repaid daily from the merchant settlements, thereby reducing credit risk each day. On average, each loan drawn out was around AUD 47,000, fully repaid over 6.2 months. And finally, liquidity management is an essential part of running Tyro's growing payments portfolio and banking book. On any given day, we could be transacting more than AUD 150 million in settlements, and therefore actively managing a high-quality liquid portfolio is a critical part of running the business. Performance of these investment activities is shown on the right side of the slide. We generated AUD 7.2 million in gross profit from these activities, leveraging an increasing interest rate environment.
Turning to the next slide, slide 17, I'd like to talk through the expenses for the year. Operating expenses were well controlled, especially after announcing the cost reduction program in October last year. For the first half of FY 2023, we reported expenses of AUD 75.7 million. For the second half, we reduced our overall spend by AUD 0.5 million, incurring AUD 75.2 million in expenses. This was despite capitalizing AUD 6.5 million in the first half, compared to AUD 5.5 million in the second half. Comparing the second half to the first, as our salary review cycle is 1 January, we provided annualized salary increases of approximately 4.1%, leading to an increase of AUD 2 million in staff costs.
Add to this, the lower capitalization of AUD 1 million in the second half, our total staff costs taken to the income statement increased by AUD 3 million. Lending losses increased by AUD 1.1 million from the first half. Total lending losses recognized for the year were AUD 2.9 million, up from AUD 0.6 million in the previous year. While the increased losses reflect the economic impact on mainly small and medium businesses, the performance of the loan book was controlled, with pricing adjusted for risk throughout the year. Marketing costs increased by a further AUD 1 million compared to the first half, or AUD 2.7 million compared to the previous year.
We have consistently called out marketing as an area we have underinvested in, and new products launched during the year, as well as partnerships with Telstra and Apple, provided an opportunity to invest in both digital campaigns and brand awareness. Our unprompted brand awareness was at a record high of 27% at 30th June, 2023. Licenses and hosting costs increased by AUD 1 million, recognizing investments in automated onboarding, security, multi-terminal support, as well as increases in cloud computing costs. Cloud costs are largely consumption-based and will grow with our customer base and transaction growth. With time, however, we're getting more sophisticated with monitoring utilization rates and uptime. Offsetting these increases were savings of AUD 5 million from the cost reduction program in the second half. Additionally, terminal management and logistics costs reduced in the second half by AUD 1.6 million.
The total expenses of AUD 150.9 million gave us the lowest operating expense to gross profit ratio of 78% since listing. As Jon mentioned, this focus on efficiency will allow us to drive forward sustainably. As I called out before, our strong focus for the year has been to generate positive free cash flow, which I will talk about in slide 18. We achieved positive free cash flow of AUD 5.7 million for the year, up from -AUD 34.1 million in FY 2022. The result included one-off payments of AUD 2.9 million for costs associated with takeover discussions, as well as AUD 1.3 million in termination payments incurred in implementing the cost reduction program.
While the free cash flow number is positive, AUD 5.7 million for the year, it represents an increase of AUD 39.8 million to the prior year of -AUD 34.1 million. In summary, this increase is explained by an increase in EBITDA of AUD 31.6 million, driven by a 25% increase in transaction value, margin management, and the cost reduction program. A reduction of AUD 4.8 million in remediation payments relating to the January 2021 terminal incident. We spent approximately AUD 5 million on remediation costs in the last year, while only AUD 248,000 were paid in FY 2023. You will also note in the annual report that we have now released the remaining provision for remediation back into the accounts. A reduction of AUD 3.7 million in Bendigo transition costs.
With all Bendigo merchants now materially moved onto the Tyro platform, a negligible amount of transition costs should be expected within the FY 2024 year. The remainder is made up of minor differences in capital expenditure and rent payments. We will continue our focus on driving positive free cash flow into FY 2024, as you will see from the guidance Jon will provide shortly in the presentation. That is all from my side. Recapping the key themes of the results for the year. One, we had strong growth in gross profit, driven by transaction value growth, and active margin management. For the year, we reported gross profit of AUD 193.2 million, a 30% increase on FY 2022. Secondly, we further improved EBITDA margin.
At AUD 42.3 million, we achieved an EBITDA margin of 22%, which was up 15 points to the prior year. Finally, we achieved positive free cash flow of AUD 5.7 million for the full year, which was close to a AUD 40 million increase over the last year. I will now pass back to Jon to provide a trading update, as well as our expectations of the business for FY 2024.
That's great. Thank you, Prav. I now ask you to move to slide 20, and I'll provide a trading update. As expected, we've seen some slowing in growth in the first two months of the new financial year. Transaction value for the period July 1 until August 25 was AUD 6.5 billion, 6.3% higher than the corresponding period. The slower growth was most apparent in our Bendigo, powered by Tyro merchants, where growth versus the corresponding period was 9% lower. Growth was strongest in health and in services, with 28.9% and 12.3% respectively, versus the same period last year. Over this past six months, we've taken a more cautious approach to lending, and we've adjusted risk settings to manage loan originations.
For the period July 1 to August 25, these were AUD 22 million, up 14.4% from the corresponding period. To the end of July, group gross profit was up 11% to AUD 16.9 million. EBITDA for July was AUD 4.1 million, 86% higher than the corresponding period, and our EBITDA margin was 24%, up from 14% for the same period. If you could now turn to slide 21. Earnings guidance for financial year 2024 highlights our continued focus on profit growth. For transaction value, we are guiding to a range of between AUD 45 billion and AUD 47.5 billion. For gross profit, we are guiding to between AUD 206 million and AUD 215 million.
For EBITDA, we have a range of between AUD 52 million and AUD 58 million, and we are targeting an EBITDA margin of approximately 26%. We will also continue to target positive free cash flow. Finally, if I can ask you to turn now to slide 22 for what's ahead. While we are pleased with the success achieved in 2023, we recognize there are challenges ahead. The current interest rate environment is moderating discretionary spend, particularly in our hospitality and retail verticals. While our early results continue to highlight growth, our diversification in the non-discretionary health and services vertical is an important risk mitigant, and one that our first few months suggest is gaining traction. The competitive landscape is also changing. New entrants and new payment acceptance forms, such as account to account, provide both risks and opportunities for Tyro.
Despite these challenges, I'm very excited and confident in Tyro's future. We know, however, that if we continue outpacing market growth, there are important product, distribution, and resourcing questions that we must address. We will continue to deliver on our strategic priorities of product innovation, pricing optimization, and disciplined cost management. But we are also reviewing our strategy, and we're considering key issues, including the role of banking, how we source products, the efficiency and utility of our proprietary payment switch, and our go-to-market approach, including our relationship with partners, including our POS partners. On the eighteenth of October, we will host our first Investor Strategy Day, where we will present our updated strategy and give you the opportunity to meet our executive team. Further details will be provided in early September.
We look forward to seeing many of our current and potential investors at this session and to addressing your questions. FY 2023 will be remembered as a challenging year for our team and a transformative moment for our company. While headcount reductions, changes in the operating model, and the uncertainty presented by a potential acquisition presented challenges, the renewed focus on regaining our mantle as Australia's leading payments innovator has energized the team for a new era. I would like to thank our fantastic merchants and network of partners. To our committed team, many of whom are listening today, thank you for embracing the changes I have led and for your hard work to deliver a record set of financial and operating results. I will now hand back to the call host, J.L., and invite any questions.
Thank you. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star one again. One moment for your first question. Your first question comes from the line of Bob Chen of JP Morgan. Your line is open.
Morning, guys. Just a few questions from me. Just looking at that guidance for FY 2024, you've got, essentially around sort of 8%-9% growth in TV, at the midpoint. But then you've-- you're trading up there with sort of around 6%-7%. So can you talk a little bit about, you know, what you've baked in, to come, to get to your FY 2024 number?
Morning, Bob. Good to hear from you. So as we spoke about or as you just saw in my speech, our actual results are driven both by factors that have been controllable by us and factors that have been outside of our control. And therefore, in the transaction value, we've given a bit of a wide range to factor in any macroeconomic conditions that might impact us. So I probably won't give you details on exactly how, but if you actually look at our transaction value, on the transaction value by vertical, we've taken a vertical approach. Health has been a very strong performer, and we would expect that to grow strongly both at the bottom end or the top end of the guidance.
The services sector, which is an emerging sector for us, that also grew quite strongly, and we would expect that to actually have between low double-digit growth to high double-digit growth,
... Hospitality, on the low end, we would expect that to be on single-digit growth. On the top end, we would expect that that would get back onto the mid-teens. Whereas retail is going to be between flat and single-digit growth. So I think that's from a payments perspective. Margin-wise, we're expecting to maintain the margin, probably increase the net MAC slightly, but maintain the gross margin. I think our banking front, which will be increasing, but moderately compared to the overall numbers. And then finally, as you will see, our investment income, as our portfolio grows, we will be getting a full year benefit of leveraging higher interest rates for the full year. So that will contribute a few million AUD in there. So that's, that's from the, the top line.
While we expect to continue having a disciplined approach to our expense management, which will therefore drive our operating leverage, or EBITDA margin rather, to closer to 26%.
Thanks, Prav. I guess, just on that EBITDA margin, I think you got into that 26% number next year. I guess, you know, you guys have obviously done a pretty big cost out plan. Is there any more work there to be done? I think previously you guys were reviewing your banking license and what to do with that. I mean, any updates on thoughts around that?
Look, probably not now, Bob. I mean, I think that you can see from our results in FY 2023 that a really disciplined approach to cost management is just critical to the way that we're going to run the business on an ongoing basis. I did talk about some of the further work that we're doing around digitizing processes for internally, for our merchants and for our customers, and we continue to think that will drive efficiencies. But more broadly, just managing costs tightly is just fundamental to the way that we'll run the business.
Okay, cool. And just finally, like Bendigo, obviously, a little bit disappointing to see customers go backwards there. I mean, has there been any fundamental change in that business, or that relationship that's led to that?
No, Bob, I mean, I think the relationship we have with, with Bendigo is, is really strong. I think that, what we have seen over the last probably six months in particular, is we have completed the transition or the migration of customers from the, from the, Bendigo switch to the Tyro switch, is we have seen a reduction, as you would probably expect, in, several of those low or no transacting merchants who, who have not migrated across. So, you know, in retrospect, I don't think it's a huge surprise for us. I think that, we are very actively working with, the Bendigo team. They're doing a lot of work around their, business bank and agribusiness strategy, and, and we're hooked in with that very closely.
So we would expect to, to see continued growth from both merchant number and transaction value, notwithstanding perhaps some of the broader macroeconomic challenges, but we would continue to expect to see some, some growth, and that relationship's a good one for us.
Thanks, Jon.
Your next question comes from the line of Owen Humphries of Canaccord. Your line is open.
Good one. Good day, guys. Just a quick question on the application number. So be curious to know how much of the 15,000 that you guys received in the year was processed into live terminals? And I guess the question is: what was that number in FY 2022?
Do you have that number there?
Yeah. So, the application numbers this year, we obviously launched new products this year as well, including the BYO, as well as the Tyro Go. Now, BYO was probably launched closer to the end of the year, so we did have a boost in application numbers from those as well. Now, a lot of those were not active at 30th June, so we would see them trading more in the FY 2024 financial year. At this point, though, anecdotally, the BYO applications we... As expected, we are seeing on the smaller end of of new merchants, as well as existing merchants who are supplementing their payment types. From the number of applications that transact within the year, we normally have a two-month lag on average between the applications coming in.
So if you take an average of about 1,300 applications each month, you would expect them to fall into FY 2024. And obviously with last year, I think we had around about 14,000 in total applications. So if you take 2/12 of that, that would have transacted in FY 2023.
One, I guess the question here is, in terms of net unit growth, last year you added, on FY 2022, it was called 7 odd thousand. This year's a bit lower, kind of 5.6. Given that anecdote there, would you expect the number to be broadly similar to FY 2024, around 5,000-6,000?
The difference in there would be related to inactive merchants at 30th June. So every year we have roughly about 3,000 merchants that are inactive, or 3-3.5 thousand. We only report on active merchants, because that's what contributes to our transaction value. This year, that number is slightly higher, again, related to, as I mentioned, BYO, which came across around about June of the year, and therefore all the transactions haven't been processed yet.
Gotcha. So you expect the net adds in FY24 to be below FY23 for the Tyro Go business?
Yes. That's correct. Correct.
Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from Brendan Carrig of Macquarie. Your line is open.
Good morning. Just back on margins, in terms of the payments margins, maybe one for you, Prav. Just given the comment you made there, payments margin likely to be sort of on the net basis, flat to up. With international coming back, can you just talk through maybe some of the moving parts, given international, I think from what you've said before, probably trends back towards 4% of total transactions, so that's likely to be a headwind. So where are the offsets to that potential headwind from international normalizing higher coming from?
Yeah, good morning, Brendan. Thanks for the question. It goes back to part of the pricing optimization program that we've spoken about since the half year, and it is something that we're quite focused on. One of the things in the past that we had was international was blended across our overall merchant base, and therefore, effectively, the overall merchant base would have subsidized the international costs. So you're correct, in terms of margin, international is the highest MSF, but contributes pretty much zero margin. Things that we're doing to counter that, one is we're trying to break that up. So one of the things we're looking at is moving merchants with five normalized basis, and normalized on average is better margin for us.
So that way, it'll be merchants who actually use higher international, actually pay for the higher international. Obviously, merchants who are on cost- plus, it doesn't really matter for us because we've got a set margin for them. So as that grows, it would increase their prices, and therefore, the MSF will offset the increasing costs. The other activities that we've got as well is no-cost EFTPOS, which is in pilot right now, and we feel that merchants will be less sensitive to pricing changes there. So again, with merchants that are on the international, no-cost EFTPOS, their MSF will likely be higher, but then, effectively at a no cost to the, to the merchant. Some of these activities have actually been completed in the year.
So if you look, we've gone from 1.1% last year to 2.6%, so that's more than double, but our margin has increased both on the, on the Tyro core book by 0.6 basis points. But even if you look into adding Bendigo, where we haven't repriced merchants at all yet, it's also gone up by 0.2 basis points. So, that's already happening. Since COVID, prior to COVID, the Bendigo book is the, probably the key one that's come onto our book, and from the profile of the merchants, I don't see that there is many international transactions being processed in their books, and therefore, I probably don't expect, the overall mix to go towards the 5%.
But we're pretty confident that these activities that we're doing will separate the international impact, so it doesn't dilute the overall portfolio.
Okay, that's useful. Maybe just on the other income from sort of interest rates and investment income, should that be? Is that, I guess, linked to the banking business in some ways, given the sort of additional capital, and then sort of the reinvestment of some of the funds that are held within that business into lower risk assets? So I guess from a, I mean, how should we be aggregating those together to a certain extent, if we're thinking about what the banking business earns for your group?
Now, so the other interesting, and it probably hasn't been as significant in the last two to three years because the interest rates have been at a record low. To be honest, a lot of this is actually to do with the payment side of it, as our working capital requirements grow, as our overall book grows, and therefore we have to actively manage these cash flows, to effectively get an accretive margin, over the entire book. From a banking side, though, it is a great opportunity for us because if you look at our products, our overall cost of funds for the year on the deposits were less than 1%.
And even if we were to invest those funds in our lending book, which is great yields at 18% overall, that we saw last year on a gross profit. But also, if we had excess deposits from the transaction account, which is virtually zero cost of funds for us, we are able to actually generate a positive income from those. So yeah, I would say it's a combination of both the banking and the payments, but more so the payments than the banking.
Yeah. Okay. But there is some banking interest income that's not interest income on loans that is actually reported in the other, not in the banking division?
No, the interest income on loans is completely reported in the banking division. We would have some where we would be requiring to hold liquid assets and capital against it, which will be in the other and not in the loans front.
That's useful. That's clear. And then just the last one for me, just on the CapEx, I think you did touch on it, but sorry, I didn't get the specifics. Just the uptick in FY 2024 versus FY 2023 of circa AUD 5 million at the, at the midpoint. So what's driving that delta in, in a little bit more detail? And, and should that sort of be the number we're thinking about going forward from a CapEx perspective?
Yeah. So from a CapEx perspective, again, we've got a bit of a wide delta that we've guided towards. And the reason for that, again, going back to we are looking to... Well, we haven't guided a specific number. We had 17,000 new applications this year. We are looking to increase that into next year. Mathematically, obviously, as we have a larger book, we have to keep increasing our new applications to keep growing that book and then manage churn on the other side. So part, depending on which channels they come through and which type of customers they come through, we would be spending CapEx on the new terminals.
Offsetting that obviously would be the BYO, where there is no upfront CapEx per se, as well as the Go Readers, where the CapEx is probably 10% of what we'd normally pay for a terminal. So I think we're effectively just guiding to allowing for a higher CapEx, depending on the mix that we get through.
Okay. And then there was a write- back in the EBITDA. Just wondering if there's any write- backs and recoveries factored into the FY 2024 EBITDA guidance?
Sorry, which write- back?
There was an insurance—it was at the insurance recoveries and the remediation provision write- back, potentially, in FY 2023.
Yeah, that's right. Look, we-
Maybe just from an FY 24 perspective, normalized EBITDA guidance, that doesn't have any sort of a write- backs really, any of those sorts of one-off?
No, it doesn't, and neither does the FY 2023. So we've actually normalized the write- backs in FY 2023 as well. So we wrote back the remediation provision, which was about AUD 3.7 million, left on the balance sheet. We did settle our class action, and therefore, if you look in our annual report, there is a gross AUD 5 million increase in assets and AUD 5 million increase in liabilities, offsetting it under the accounting standards. In terms of remediation, there is already an agreed amount of AUD 0.8 million that we will be receiving, which we haven't. We will receive in FY 2024. However, we recognize that income in FY 2023, but we have normalized it out, as it's not part of our normal operating business.
Yeah. So, Brendan, a direct comparison for you, if you look at the AUD 42.3 million EBITDA FY 2023, that's a direct comparison to the guidance that we put out there. There's no significant one-off or anything like that included in those numbers.
That's as it should be. Thanks very much, guys.
Great. Just for that, Brendan, page 25 is where we've detailed out all our normalizations in the investor pack.
Thank you. And your next question comes from the line of Gabriel Kennedy of UBS. Your line is open.
Oh, hi. I just wanted to ask about the June merchant number of 15,600. Is that the go-forward normalized number from here, or are there still merchants in transition, which is suppressing this number?
So, just in terms of that merchant number, so that's obviously the Tyro core book merchant application number that you're referring to. On top of that, we've obviously got Bendigo application numbers that take it to the 17,000. So, no, that's not a normalized number. As Prav explained previously, that is effectively the new applications that are converting into new merchants for us, into FY 2024. So, no, no normalizations in that number at all.
All right, thanks. Also, would you be able to, have you assumed a slowing transaction value per merchant going into FY 2024 guidance?
No, we haven't. So as I mentioned, in terms of the average transaction size, that's actually grown. But what we can see obviously is on a net basis. So I think there's an inflationary impact, which has a positive impact. But on the other side, people are buying less, is what we see, and it's different by vertical. So health continues to be very strong, and the average transaction size in health actually increased as well. Retail has been flat, and the average transaction size has gone backwards as well. On hospitality, I think on an overall basis, it's increased by about 1%, and this is for the full year, so not going into FY 2024, but definitely in the second half of FY 2023.
All right, thank you.
Overall, transaction size increased by 2.2%.
Okay, thanks. Just one last question: is AUD 11 million the go-forward for share-based payments expense number from here?
Uh, no.
No, it's not. So the share-based payments for FY 2023 is larger than normal, and the reason for that is most of it is based on the FY 2023 STI, and you will see details of that in the remuneration report. Forty percent of the STI was financial results-based, and if you compare our original guidance, which was in the mid-20s for EBITDA, we achieved an actual of 42.3, which is an amazing effort from the team. And the whole STI gets paid 67% by way of equity and 33% by way of cash. So it has been because of that accelerator in the STI, largely driven by that.
Thank you very much. Congratulations on the result.
Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Your next question comes from the line of Hayden Nicholson of Bell Potter. Your line is open.
Hey, thanks, guys. Sort of been talked about, but would you be able to expand on the unit economics of the payments business a bit more? You mentioned the ATS, but I guess the average revenue per terminal, and then also upfront in the CACs, sales and marketing, and I suppose hardware, too, with that new rollout in the Tyro Pro Android terminals.
Yeah, great. Thank you for the question. We don't actually disclose our customer economics, and the main reason we don't is because there's no standardized way of calculating LTV to CAC. So if you look at every second business, the methodology they use is all very different. We do have our own methodology, and we baseline it year to year. On a portfolio basis, on average, the unit economics are about 6-8 times LTV to CAC ratio, and we feel that that's very healthy. If you then drill down by segments rather than verticals, our micro is probably the lowest LTV to CAC ratio, whereas the medium size is our sweet spot.
Then on an enterprise basis, again, it comes down a little bit because the unit margins are much sharper, and they require more investment upfront in terms of integrations and customer management. So things that we have done to improve our overall LTV to CAC initiatives that we mentioned about in this year, so automated onboarding, which would reduce our CAC, as well as digital self-serve into the future. So I think that would be improving the unit economics on our lower end. The other thing I would call out is that we've got value-added products by way of our banking products, which are not included in these numbers. So while we have taken the investment into our books already, the returns are yet to come into the future.
We feel that's a great opportunity, a huge opportunity for us to increase the LTV to CAC ratio into the future.
Yep, sure. Are you able to tell us what you're paying per, hardware ad for the merchants?
Yeah. So from a terminal perspective, depending on which terminal, so previously we had our Y series. So around about on average, probably AUD 350-AUD 400 per terminal. Our new terminals will be roughly the same. A Tyro Go reader is around about AUD 50-AUD 60 per reader. On the BYO, we have no upfront cost.
Sure.
Okay.
Then just lastly, would you be able to say how least-cost routing's been progressing for digital payments? Is that regulated yet or what you've been doing, is that an initiative on your side?
So for digital payments, for in-store payments, some of the numbers I quoted were 31%-54% increase in payments there. And those numbers were recently disclosed by the RBA. We will continue to push our least- cost routing solution, what we call Tap and Save, because it really provides value to a merchant. So it's something that we're going to continue to drive.
There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back to Jon Davey for closing remarks.
Thank you, Jael, and thank you all for joining our call today. We're proud of the results. We look forward to meeting many of you at our Investor Roadshows over the next week or so. But we'll end today's call now. So thank you once again.
This concludes today's conference call. You may now all disconnect.