Good morning, and a warm welcome to our 2022 Full Year Results Presentation. Thank you for joining us. I'm June Felix, Group CEO. With me today is Charlie Rozes, our CFO. FY 22 has been another fantastic year, as we again deliver record results. Over the last three years, we have transformed the business, and we are now operating on an entirely new scale. I'll take you through some highlights from this year. Then I'll show you how we are building on our strategic momentum as we continue to diversify as a purpose-led global fintech. Charlie Rozes will then take you through the details of our financial performance and the new capital allocation framework, including our share buyback program of up to GBP 150 million that we announced today. I'll end with some concluding remarks before opening up for questions.
FY 22 has been another impressive year of delivery, and I'm extremely proud of everything we've achieved to date. We're excited about our outlook, and you'll hear more this morning about how we are executing our strategy. There are four key areas that represent the group's success and why we're so positive about the future. First, we have seen the emergence of a new IG Group as we evolve our geographic footprint and product offering to serve a large and expanding base of high-quality customers. As we execute our ambitious strategy, we are well-positioned to capitalize on a significantly larger total addressable market and take advantage of the ongoing shifts towards self-directed investing. As shown on the chart on the right, we consistently deliver with a track record of revenue growth over the last two decades of 18% compounded annual growth rate.
Second, the quality of our customer base is a key differentiator. Our clients exhibit consistent trading behavior across a range of market conditions. This, combined with our hedging model, enables us to deliver a more consistent and sustainable revenue stream when compared with other companies operating different business models. Third, the strength of our balance sheet is another differentiator, giving us the flexibility to invest organically in our business. This gives us capacity to innovate as we see many opportunities for creating new products, new content, and new services to meet the needs of ambitious self-directed customers globally. Our new capital allocation framework provides clarity on our capital priorities.
In line with this framework, we are pleased to announce the resumption of progressive dividends and a return of surplus capital to investors through a share buyback program of up to GBP 150 million, both of which Charlie will cover in more detail shortly. Finally, we're very proud of our ESG achievements this year. Our goal of making a positive impact on society is something that is very important to me. Our board fully endorses our ESG investments and our drive to make a difference in this area. This past year, we achieved our goal to positively impact 100,000 students several years ahead of schedule. We also launched various new initiatives, including a pledge to allocate 1% of adjusted annual post-tax profits to community programs through to FY 25, which equates to over GBP 4 million this year.
Now, I'd like to reflect on how these points translate into results and to share how we have accelerated our strategic progress. In FY 22, we delivered revenue growth of 14% and expanded our active client numbers by 31%. The addition of tastytrade significantly increases our total addressable market to over 21 million active traders by adding 14 million active traders of options, futures, and cash equities in the U.S. This large market of self-directed, ambitious investors has over 100 million accounts at the main U.S. brokerages. While our performance this past year is an outstanding achievement, the charts show the important evolution that our business is undergoing. We have diversified our product portfolio in the short span of three years. Today, our non-OTC derivatives business contributes 16% of revenue versus just 3% in FY 19.
This shows that our diversification strategy is working, contributing GBP 140 million of additional revenue. In addition, we have expanded geographically through our acquisition of tastytrade and through our growth in Japan. The U.S. and Japan now contribute 24% of group revenue, up from 4% just three years ago, adding GBP 207 million of additional revenue. With our outstanding results for FY 22 as backdrop, let's now turn to our strategic progress and future direction. Our Core Markets+ have maintained the step change in business achieved during the last two and a half years due to our ability to continually find, attract, and retain a high-quality and resilient client base. Our clients understand and appreciate IG's business model, which applies sophisticated hedging expertise to deliver the best possible outcomes, even when markets are highly volatile.
Japan, in particular, has gone from strength to strength and is now our third-largest market in the group, with revenues of nearly GBP 100 million, increasing more than 400% in three years. For our high-growth markets, we have expanded our footprint and market opportunities through the acquisition of tastytrade and have seen double-digit growth across the high-potential portfolio. We have a broad range of levers that we believe will drive strong growth over time, which I will discuss in greater detail shortly. We are now operating at an entirely different scale. In fact, across the board, each of our core markets is significantly larger than they were pre-COVID. IG's strong performance, in contrast to many of our peers who've had more recently seen weaker performance, is a testament to the dedication of our talented people, our robust technology, our global diversification, and our high-quality client base.
Let me now emphasize the strength of our high-quality client base. Our ability to continually attract and retain a large base of self-directed clients continue to drive enduring revenue. The attrition chart on the left shows that the large cohort onboarded in FY 21 is demonstrated the same trend as previous cohorts. Therefore, like those previous cohorts, these will add to our growing base of recurring revenue. The chart on the right illustrates how the enduring revenue continues to grow with 36% of revenue in FY 22 coming from clients onboarded more than five years ago. As expected, given the softer market conditions, the value of the first trades in FY 22 is down compared to last year, but they remain well above the pre-pandemic averages. Again, we continue to add to that enduring revenue stream faster than we did before.
There are a few reasons why we believe IG's revenues are less likely to be affected by the increased cost of living and the impact of potential future recession. The chart on the left shows our revenue growth alongside changes in inflation rates and periods of slow growth or recession over time. Historically, there's been little impact on our clients' trading and in turn, our revenues. In addition, we regularly survey our clients, and in our latest outreach just a few weeks ago, we asked clients what impact the current economic environment may have on their trading activity. Our clients noted they would prioritize trading over other discretionary spending, such as holidays and luxury items. The chart on the right shows that 90% of our clients expect their trading volume to remain the same or increase.
This behavior reflects the nature of our self-directed, high-quality customer base and really sets us apart. Japan remains a noteworthy example of how we drive growth. The positive outcomes are clear. In Japan, net trading revenue was up 43%. Active clients increased 53%, and first trades rose 53% during FY 22. With our global reach, local expertise paradigm, we paired global resources with a hyper-localized approach. A key factor of our success here is our winning marketing strategy, which targets key channels to build our brand, enabling us to see continued growth in our active client base. We see considerable opportunities to further increase our share of this enormous market of over two million active traders. Our high-potential markets have also shown positive momentum with the pro forma total revenue, excluding Nadex, up 20% on FY 21.
Tastytrade delivered total revenue, including interest income, of GBP 112 million, growing 16%. Our U.S.. Retail foreign exchange business grew revenue by 43% in FY 22. The result of higher average revenue per client was 77% year-on-year growth. I'm also pleased to confirm that our market share has grown. We are now ranked as the fourth-largest U.S. FX broker. Our numbers show that IG is not only delivering for clients today, we're also innovating for tomorrow's investors. In the last few years, we utilized our innovative technology, our 24-hour trading and customer service expertise to build Spectrum Markets. Spectrum's aim is to revolutionize the Pan-European retail trading market by bringing European financial institutions onto one transparent, secure exchange.
This year, Spectrum welcomed two additional brokers and increased trading opportunities on turbo certificates with selected equities and cryptocurrencies. Spectrum has seen a 67% year-on-year increase in trading volumes, allowing retail investors to unlock financial markets on a 24 by 5 basis. We have seen good momentum in FY 22, with over one billion derivatives traded and a 90% increase in revenue. Further growth is expected in FY 23 and beyond, as we integrate additional third-party brokers and plan to integrate two tier one European banks as product issuers later this year. Let's now look at tastytrade. The chart on the left shows tastytrade's significant growth over the past four years. In FY 22, tastytrade's revenues grew 16% against softer market conditions, maintaining overall market share and slightly increasing retail market share. The chart also shows how interest income is impacted by interest rate changes.
With the recent and expected future rises and the growth in client balances, this presents a healthy level of additional revenue for tastytrade in FY 23. Regarding speculation around payment for order flow in the U.S., we consider any concerns to be manageable, and the potential impact on group revenue would not be material. In recent months, there have been an industry-wide slowdown in retail trading in the U.S., which has also impacted tastytrade. Nevertheless, we remain confident in our growth ambitions and the 25%-30% medium-term growth targets we have for the tastytrade business. This confidence stems from several important growth levers that will drive sustainable revenue generation, including our marketing capability, engaging unique content, and a robust product roadmap based on our deep understanding of our target audience.
I'm also pleased with the external recognition we continue to receive with tastyworks winning the Investopedia 2022 award for Best Broker for Options. Let me now turn to the drivers of growth for tastytrade. As we did in Japan, we are scaling a brand strategy for tastytrade that is gaining the attention of traders who are looking for a platform that gives them a competitive edge. We are seeing positive initial results in these early days. Over the last several months, we have achieved a 300% improvement in paid search performance. We improved conversion through programmatic display with new customers through this channel, increasing over 20% each month. We improved the efficiency of client acquisition, and we increased our search engine optimization rankings for both tastyworks and tastytrade across numerous key search terms.
In addition, tastytrade's leadership team collectively have decades of experience applying their trading knowledge to develop new products and content that resonate with traders. For example, we recently expanded our risk management functionality by adding a new risk analysis tool that will enable our clients to better manage their own risk. The whole is truly greater than its parts here. Tastytrade's content and potential for new products will be optimized through the holistic integration of tastytrade and IG's expertise. I also want to highlight tastytrade's content, which is an industry differentiator that has educated and inspired traders for years. Tastytrade's 100 hours of weekly live content attracted over 2 million views last year from the traders in over 100 countries. People coming to tastyworks from tastytrade content also have a 77% higher client equity value than the average tastyworks trader.
Tastytrade's financial ecosystem was created from the principle that engaging content can empower individuals who want to take control of their financial future. This ethos is the foundation for our passionate approach to disrupt and innovate the retail trading landscape. Our commitment to innovate to meet clients' needs remains a key priority. We believe that these differentiators will set us apart, enabling us to capture demand and continue to deliver sustainable growth. Charlie will now give a more detailed look at our results.
Thank you, June, and good morning, everyone. I'll now take you through our results for the 2022 financial year. Let me first start by echoing June's reflections about where IG is today and the terrific progress that we've made over the past year. I'm pleased to be reporting another strong set of results for the group, with record revenue and profit and a record number of clients. I'm also pleased to be announcing our new capital allocation framework to help drive our global growth strategy. We're excited to launch the framework now, which includes a resumption of progressive dividends and a share buyback program to return surplus capital, which is a first for IG. Before I get into the highlights, I'd like to clarify a few points on the presentation of the figures.
Following the sales in March of Nadex and our investment in Small Exchange, Nadex is presented as a discontinued operation. Therefore, all the figures in this presentation today are on a continuing operations basis. Additionally, all figures are presented on an adjusted basis, just as we did at the half year, which excludes certain one-off items and non-cash costs in relation to the completion of the tastytrade deal, the sale of Nadex and Small Exchange, the debt refinancing completed in November, and a fair value gain on Zero Hash. A reconciliation of non-IFRS performance measures is presented in the appendix. Now that I've taken care of some of the housekeeping, let's move on to the financial highlights.
Total revenue of GBP 967 million is up 14% on the prior year, which primarily reflects the inclusion of revenue from tastytrade, which we acquired towards the end of June 2021. However, excluding tastytrade, revenue nonetheless still increased by 1% on what was a very tough prior year comparable, demonstrating the continued strength and resilience of our business, and as June mentioned, our unique, very high-quality client base. Profit before tax was GBP 494.3 million, up 4%, and basic EPS was GBP 0.963, down 7%, reflecting the share issuance as part of the tastytrade acquisition. Client money balances increased 49% from GBP 3.2 billion to GBP 4.7 billion, reflecting the addition of tastytrade clients in the U.S. and growth in the overall client base.
Finally, we'll be paying a final dividend of 31.24 pence per share, bringing the full year dividend to 44.2 pence, up one pence on last year. This is the first increase since F 18. I'll talk more about shareholder distributions and our dividend policy shortly when I cover the new capital allocation framework in more detail. Now, moving on to the income statement. Net trading revenue of GBP 966.5 million was an all-time record for the group. Total revenue, which includes interest income, was up 14%. Going forward, we'll focus more on total revenue as we expect interest income to become a more meaningful part of revenue in the coming years as interest rates rise, particularly in the U.S. and as our business achieves greater diversification.
Total operating costs increased by 24% to GBP 464.9 million, largely reflecting the addition of the tastytrade cost base. Allowing for a higher variable remuneration charge due to outperformance against targets, our operating costs were in line with the guidance we gave a year ago. Operating profit of GBP 507 million increased by 6%. Looking now at associates and JVs, through the tastytrade deal, we acquired investments in Small Exchange and Zero Hash, which are recognized as associates and recorded a loss of GBP 2.3 million in the year. Net finance costs increased to GBP 10.4 million as a result of a comprehensive debt refinancing we successfully completed in November.
Group profit before tax of GBP 494.3 million was up 4%, and the PBT margin, which is now calculated off of total revenue, was 51%. The effective tax rate for the year was 17%, lower than the U.K. corporate rate of 19%, primarily as a result of standard U.K. tax incentives and adjustments to prior year estimates. Focusing now on revenue, this chart shows our revenue by product across the last six half-year periods and demonstrates two things. First, how the scale of this business has transformed over the last three years with significant increases in revenue across all product lines. It's noteworthy that the group's revenue in the second half of FY 22 was more than double what it was in the first half of FY 20, prior to the pandemic.
This has been driven not only by our growth strategy, which we accelerated through the Significant Opportunities Program and the tastytrade acquisition, but also through the substantial expansion of the OTC client base over the last three years. Second, the chart demonstrates how revenue is now starting to become much more diversified, with non-OTC revenue now representing 16% of total group revenue in the second half of FY 22, compared to just 2% in the first half of FY 20. All of this underpins one of our key messages today, that we're changing the definition of what IG is, and there's much more to come as we execute our strategy. Looking in more detail at the drivers of revenue, here we show the revenue, active clients, and revenue per client by product.
OTC derivatives revenue of GBP 811.5 million was up 2% on the prior year, reflecting some moderation in the number of active clients down 8%. However, this was more than offset by a 10% increase in the average revenue per client, as the dilution that we typically see from new clients was less of a significant factor compared with the prior year. We're very pleased to report that we continue to retain the significantly enlarged client base that we built up over the last 2.5 years. We've said before that our unique client base is a long-term asset to the company, and FY 22 proved that point in our view.
Exchange Traded Derivatives revenue was GBP 121.2 million and includes GBP 110.1 million of U.S. options and futures revenue generated from tastytrade for the 11 months since acquisition, and GBP 9.3 million from European derivatives, which nearly doubled over FY 21 as Spectrum builds further momentum on our Frankfurt-based trading venue. Stock trading and investments revenue was GBP 33.8 million, down 13% as trading volumes moderated as anticipated from last year's heightened activity levels. Active clients, however, increased by 4%. Now on to operating costs. As a reminder, these are presented on an adjusted basis and without Nadex. Throughout the year, we continue to balance investing in the future growth of the business with careful management of the cost base.
Our costs for the full year are consistent with the guidance that we set a year ago, and we've included a reconciliation in the appendix to support this. Our largest expense line is fixed remuneration, which in FY22 was GBP 150.1 million. Last year, we invested in expanding our workforce to drive the strategy, increasing headcount by 440 in the year. Of this increase, just under half of it was simply the addition of the tastytrade employees, and most of the remaining headcount growth was within technology and operations to add capacity to support the enlarged business and the delivery of key projects. Technology spend has also increased as a result of our continued investment in the performance, resilience and security of our digital infrastructure and platforms.
Now, when I stand back and look at our rates of technology investment over time, I think it's noteworthy that our cumulative investment spend aimed at improving our technology and innovating new capabilities for clients amounts to over GBP 125 million in the last four years. This demonstrates our ability and commitment to invest continually in our platforms and remain at the forefront of technology. We also believe that this stands in contrast to some other firms who may have more of a start-stop approach to these types of investments. Spending generally on the cost line was weighted more to the second half as we guided to back at the half year due to the planned timing of certain projects and the phasing of some other costs which were incurred in H2 and now part of the run rate.
Like all businesses now, we felt general inflationary pressures and will continue to do so in the coming year. Some of these pressures began to impact in the second half, including bringing our annual staff pay review forward by several months to respond to the increased cost of living challenges for our people around the world. Overall, our cost management in the year was very good, again, driving a healthy PBT margin for the group in excess of 50%. Overall, FY22 has been an excellent year for the group and sets us up well for further growth. Now I'd like to switch gears and talk to you about our new capital allocation framework. Last year, we announced that we'd be revising our capital allocation framework on account of several factors.
First, and perhaps most importantly, we're well progressed with a strategy focused on expansion and growth by product, client, and geography, which requires various kinds of investment. In addition, the group itself is significantly larger than before, and we had a new regulatory capital regime launched earlier this year in the U.K. All of this taken together led us to revisit our capital allocation priorities, which June, I, and the board have been working on for the past several months. Our new capital framework is underpinned by three key business priorities. First, our responsibilities, which covers a few stakeholders. One of these is to our regulators to maintain sufficient capital levels, enabling us to be differentiated versus peers as a strong counterparty. Another responsibility is playing a wider role in society as a corporate citizen.
Our second priority is investing, innovating, and growing the business in line with our ambitious strategy. Our third business priority is delivering attractive shareholder returns. The new framework will allow the group to pursue our global growth strategy and provide all of our stakeholders with a clear structure for how we prioritize our capital resources. Now let's take a look at the framework itself and walk through each of its six components. Our first priority is maintaining a strong balance sheet, which has served us well and supported our growth for nearly 50 years. We'll hold an appropriate level of regulatory capital and liquidity at all times to operate and grow our diverse portfolio of businesses. Our next priority is organic investment in the business, in line with our strategy, both in our existing franchises and in new opportunities where we see future growth.
We have a large world-class OTC derivatives business that we'll continue to invest in. Alongside that, we have our newer but fast-growing exchange-traded derivatives businesses in the U.S. and Europe, as well as stock trading. We'll continue to invest organically in all of these. Next, as a responsible corporate citizen, we're dedicated to improving the society around us. In December, we announced that from FY22 through FY25, we'll be donating 1% of our adjusted profit after tax to charitable causes with a focus on financial literacy and the environment. The positioning of our commitment to society within our framework reflects the importance and priority that we place on our role as a responsible corporate citizen. Continuing through the framework, today, we're also announcing our new policy for shareholder distributions. Distributions to shareholders will occur in two forms. The first of these is what we're calling regular distributions.
We now expect to return around 50% of adjusted profit after tax to shareholders each year through our regular distributions. This will mainly consist of an annual ordinary dividend, but may also be complemented with share buybacks or special dividends to bring us toward our payout ratio of around 50%. The board recognizes the importance to shareholders of the dividend level, and we expect to increase the dividend per share modestly each year on a progressive but sustainable basis. This approach will provide the group with a degree of flexibility in the mechanism of our regular distributions, and allows us to mitigate the potential impact from normal short-term business cycle fluctuations that could otherwise impact the sustainable growth of ordinary dividends per share.
The next two components of the framework are ones where the timing is likely to be more variable, but both components are nonetheless integral to both our strategy and our distribution policy. Following the regular distributions, we'll next allocate capital to support selected inorganic investments for growth should we see opportunity to accelerate our strategy. This is shown on the framework as the fifth component. We'll maintain an ongoing disciplined assessment of potential acquisitions, and should an opportunity arise for a value-enhancing, strategically aligned acquisition, large or small, then we'll allocate the relevant capital to drive our strategy. Again, by its nature, the timing of these opportunities won't always be certain, but we'll review potential M&A over a period of time when considering capital allocation decisions.
The final component of the framework looks at the second form of returns of capital to shareholders, what we're showing here as additional distributions, which are over and above the regular distributions. As the board keeps the level of capital on the balance sheet under review, we'll consider returns of surplus capital not required for the aforementioned priorities through either share buybacks or special dividends. The method of return will be dependent on a number of factors. At present, share buyback is our preferred method of delivering the additional distributions. Now that takes us through all the components of the new capital allocation framework. Taken together, all of this is intended to convey the disciplines that we're applying to capital allocation as we continue to execute our strategy going forward. Now let's look at what this framework means in practice and how it's been applied to our FY 22 results.
To start, let me first set the scene on our regulatory capital position at the FY 22 year-end. Since January, our minimum reg cap requirement is now calculated under IFPR, which as you can see from the chart, has been broadly neutral to the group's previous position under the CRR regime. Our reg cap headroom at the FY 22 year-end is GBP 528 million, which is a very good level, strengthened by another consecutive year of record financial performance. I should also note that our liquidity position also remains excellent. Like capital, in the ordinary course of business, our business model generates a lot of organic liquidity. We've complemented this nonetheless during the year by tripling the size and extending the term of our committed revolving credit facility to GBP 300 million.
Although this is typically undrawn and was not used in FY 22, it's an important and cost-effective source of standby liquidity, mainly to handle our clients' trading during periodic sharp spikes in market volatility, as well as supporting our growing OTC businesses around the world. Now let's come back to shareholder distributions, and let me reiterate some of the points that I made when talking about the framework a short while ago. There are essentially three things being announced today. First, we'll be delivering a progressive ordinary dividend with modest but sustainable annual growth in the dividend per share. Second, we'll supplement the dividend with either a share buyback or special dividend when necessary to deliver around 50% of adjusted profit after tax in total for both the dividend and the supplement.
Third, we'll undertake additional distributions, also in the form of a buyback or special dividend, when the group has a surplus capital position for which all of the priorities for regulatory requirements, citizenship, and investment have been satisfied first. By implementing the new framework now, today we're announcing a full year dividend of 44.2 pence per share, representing a one pence increase on the FY 21 dividend. We're also announcing a share buyback program of up to GBP 150 million, which will commence later today and should be substantially complete in FY 23. You can see in the depiction on this slide how these distributions fit into our framework, with our dividend making up virtually all of the regular distribution and the buyback program contributing to both the regular and the additional distributions.
As we've often said before, but it bears repeating here, that IG is a company that generates a lot of capital and liquidity in the ordinary course of business. As we go forward, we'll be allocating capital carefully, but from a position of strength. Finally, before I hand back to June to wrap up, I'd just like to go over some guidance points. First, on revenue, we're reconfirming our medium-term guidance on Core Markets+ and our high-potential markets and remain confident in achieving these targets. In Core Markets+, we continue to target total revenue growth of 5%-7% per annum over the medium term. In our high-potential markets, we're targeting total revenue growth of 25%-30% per annum over the medium term in this portfolio of faster-growing businesses in the U.S. and Europe.
Across the whole group, I'd expect that going forward, total revenue will be more in line with net operating income due to normalization of the U.K. betting duty that we pay. As mentioned previously, our operating costs were higher in the second half compared to the first. This was due to several factors, including project phasing and the acceleration of CPI-linked pay rises for our staff. Therefore, our FY 23 operating costs should reflect more of the H2 run rate, plus an additional inflationary impact in the mid-single digits that affects a number of cost lines. On margins, we anticipate a PBT margin just above the mid-40s% in FY 23, and then increasing slightly over the medium term to the high 40s%, which we see as the sustainable normalized margin for the group over time.
This allows the right balance between careful cost management set against our ongoing investment programs. Now, as we've seen in the last few years, when we have periods of exceptional revenues driven by heavy market activity, we'll see significant operating leverage and margin expansion in those times, as we've had over the past few years. As a final point on tax, I'd guide you to an effective tax rate in FY 23 of around 19%, reflecting the anticipated mix of business in the coming year and the higher U.K. corporate tax rate coming in towards the end of our financial year in April 2023. Beyond FY 23, we expect the effective tax rate to increase from FY 24, as we see the full year impact of anticipated higher U.K. corporate tax rates from April 2023. Thank you very much.
With that, I'll now hand back over to June.
Thank you, Charlie. In conclusion, this year's outstanding performance provides support for our future direction. We are now operating on an entirely different scale. We have transformed our business over the last three years. We've made great strides in diversifying the business organically and inorganically, while at the same time banking the step change in growth that we achieved during the pandemic. We have multiple growth levers across the business and are now accessing a much larger and growing addressable market. Our track record of winning market share makes us perfectly positioned to benefit from the structural shifts towards self-directed trading. We see this shift in markets around the world. We are diversified both by geography and by product. We will continue to diversify as we expand our geographic footprint and our product range through organic investment, and if appropriate and consistent with our capital allocation framework, inorganic investment.
Our content, technology, and platforms are market-leading. Clients have a wide range of educational content containing leading research and actionable trading insights. We continually invest in technology and platforms in order to provide the best possible execution and trading tools, as well as our sophisticated and proven market risk management. Our success is underpinned by our large, high-quality client base. Our clients are ambitious, active traders who seek opportunities to trade in all market conditions. We also continue to add to that quality client base, adding new clients faster now than before the pandemic. The result is a sustained and enduring revenue stream. Finally, our business is supported by our strong balance sheet and sound capital management through our new capital allocation framework, delivering value for our shareholders today and tomorrow.
In summary, our strong fundamentals and consistent revenue conversion drive more sustainable profit over time at lower risk compared to others in our sector. Thank you very much. We'll turn it over to the operator now for questions.
If you wish to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and wish to remove your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. To confirm that, star followed by one to ask the question. Your first question today is from Ian White, from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning. Thanks for doing the presentation. A few questions from my side, please. First up, on the capital allocation framework, can you just maybe clarify a little bit your thinking around the capital surplus you're looking to run with? If I take off the. First tranche of the buyback, the GBP 75 million, from the just sort of GBP 530 headroom that you have, you know, sort of down at the sort of GBP 450 type levels, is that where we should expect to see the group run in terms of capital surplus in the absence of foreseeable increases, for example, in the regulatory capital requirements or sort of foreseeable drag on the capital base? Would that be sort of a fair starting assumption for us to work with, please? That's question one.
Secondly, can I just ask for a bit of clarification around the 25%-30% annual revenue growth guidance for the high-potential markets? Is that constant currency or reported growth? Does it include the impact of U.S rate hikes? And what are you assuming for those rate hikes, please? Just some clarifications around that would be useful. Just lastly, I'm just wondering if you could provide any update around the expansion timeline for tastytrade in terms of those international initiatives you've mentioned previously. I think I'm right in saying that Canada still hasn't launched yet, for example, and there were some operational issues around that that you mentioned earlier in the year. Anything you could update on that too, please, would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Yeah, thank you very much for the question from the BNY Group. I'll take the last question, and then I'll turn it over to Charlie for the first two. In terms of expansion of tastytrade internationally, we are very encouraged by the opportunities internationally for tastytrade. We see also that the U.S. market is such a huge opportunity that that will be our primary focus. That being said, Canada as well as some of the other markets we've discussed before, Singapore and Australia, are on deck for us to continue to build out. We expect Canada to be. We're ready to go forward in Canada. We're just waiting for some of the regulatory aspects to be completed. That will take some time as it is always unpredictable.
Turning to the first two questions on capital allocation and the advent of 25%-30% annual growth, I'll just turn that to Charlie for a second.
Yeah, thanks. Let me just keep going in reverse order. The 25%-30% annual revenue growth in high-potential, that is on a constant currency basis. We haven't taken a view on what translational FX may look like, you know, over the next couple of years, so it is on that basis. You also asked about U.S. rate hikes. That is included in our outlooks. I've said to a few people that, you know, we've made some assumptions around what that profile might look like over the next few years. However, if the Fed, you know, moves more aggressively or slowly, you know, we'll come back and consider revising guidance, you know, at that time. We do have some of that built in there already.
Your first question about capital surplus and how to think of that. I think the slide that I showed a short while ago, I think it shows and demonstrates that over time, in a variety of markets, we have the ability to accrete capital each year. All else being equal, I would expect us to be able to continue to do that going forward. Obviously, in the most recent year, we had some of the headroom being bolstered by the disposal of Nadex. But even absent that, we're still accreting capital, as I said. I would just think of it in probably those types of terms going forward. Hope that helps.
Thanks for that. Yeah, it is helpful. Just on the first comment you made on my second question, the growth guidance is on a constant currency basis. Is that the FY 22 average FX rates, or are you saying kind of as we sit today looking at current FX rates, we think we'll report 25%-30% growth? Could you just clarify that for me, please?
Well, actually, from the time that we originally issued the guidance back in last year in FY 21, we were looking at the growth, you know, exchange rates as they stood at that time. I think in FY 2022, from where sterling started the year to where it ended the year, there actually wasn't much movement one way or the other on it. Hence, there's not much of a difference between local currency growth and GBP growth for those businesses, the U.S. business in particular.
Okay, thank you.
Yep.
The next question comes from the line of Ben Bathurst from RBC. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. I've got questions on two areas, if I may. Firstly, on the buyback, you mentioned a buyback program of up to GBP 150 million. Is there a minimum commitment to the size of that return? I just wanted to check 'cause it seems that you are being slightly kind of careful on the language. Secondly, a couple on tastytrade. You've confirmed plans to launch in Canada, it seems. My understanding is that payment for order flow is effectively banned in Canada. What sort of revenue model are you proposing to use in that country? Does that give us a clue as to what steps you might take if the SEC acts to reduce the viability of those revenues in the US?
I also noticed on slide 14, you don't give the year-on-year move on the client money balance for tastytrade. I just wondered if that's something you could share perhaps, as you do give the year-on-years for the other metrics. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Ben. I'm gonna start with your second question first in terms of tastytrade and Canada. As you know, in our business in tastytrade, we also charge on commission, so that's going to be an important part of our business model there, and that will continue in Canada. That was one of the key questions you had on that.
In terms of the client monies, I'll give that to Charlie to answer, and also the buyback.
Thanks, Ben. Client money balances at tastytrade were probably consistent year-over-year. That's one. Then on the buyback, the choice, the wording up to 150, I don't think there's anything to read into that. I think it's fairly standard terminology. Our intention is to buy back GBP 150 million of shares in the program.
Okay, great.
Okay.
Thanks for that.
Yep.
The next question is from the line of Richard Taylor from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Just a quick question on the active clients, please. They were down 8% in OTC derivatives. I think you noted that this was largely mix based, i.e., you're retaining higher quality clients, and that's reflected in the higher revenue per client. Can you give us some thoughts, please, on how actives should trend moving forward in this area of OTC and how that fits in with your 5%-7% revenue growth in Core Markets+ in the medium term? Thank you.
Yeah. Let me start, and I'm sure Charlie will add in as well. As you said, we've actually seen the growth in terms of revenue per active client because of the quality of the clients, which we've emphasized is a critical differentiator versus other participants in this market. We would see, as we mentioned in the survey that we've just done, in the last two-three weeks, that people continue to intend to trade. 90% of all people will trade irrespective of conditions, whether it's recession, inflation, et cetera, because they see this as part of their core activity, and that is driven our confidence in terms of achieving the 5%-7% in the medium term.
Yeah. I think just to add to that. You know, when we look at where we've been with active clients, certainly through the pandemic period and then, you know, where we are today, I mean, our outlook is positive, you know, around this. I mean, as you know, this is a great business for us. We absolutely love this business. From here, we would expect the active client roles to grow, probably, you know, in the shorter term, over the next year or two, maybe mid-single digits and then rising to high single digits, beyond that. I mean, that's our planning assumption right now. Obviously, you know, we've got a terrific, you know, business, well underway in Japan. That's a terrific growth lever in that space.
The Australia business, which is obviously one of our bigger OTC businesses, you know, that we expect will continue to grow as it comes out of the post-ASIC regulation from last March, just to highlight those two. Hopefully that gives some color around how we think about actives going forward.
That's helpful. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone. The next question is from the line of Isaac Geyer from Shore Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got a few, please. The first one. I'm not sure I understood what you were saying about, I guess, the sort of capital headroom and therefore potential for special returns. I mean, just put the question kind of more simply, you've got regulatory capital headroom of GBP 528 million in 2022. I appreciate that's been increasing the last couple of years, but prior to that it was sort of averaging, you know, just eyeballing this more like 200-250. What is the right number? I appreciate there needs to be some tolerance in there for sort of spikes up or down in market activity levels.
If you could just help us think about that, please. The next question, just invite you please, if you could comment as well on current trading, tastytrade, Core Markets please, if you can. The last thing, the interest income that tastytrade generates, could you just talk a little bit about how you do that, so you know, where you place that money, to get a sense of what sort of thing we could model in for this year, and going forward. Many thanks.
Okay. Thanks a lot for that. Just starting with the first one on capital headroom. I mean, I'll just go back to what I said before. I mean, I think we do have a proven ability over time to accrete capital out of the business model. All else being equal, I would expect that to continue. As I said, within that 528, we have about GBP 107 million of benefit from the sale of the Nadex business that I would say is non-recurring. There's not much more I can really add to that. I mean, I think we've been pretty clear in terms of laying out our direction and thinking on capital today.
I think we've taken a lot of ambiguity out of the picture in terms of what our priorities were. I think the priorities in the framework are pretty clearly articulated, and they're all aimed at delivering an attractive return to shareholders as we execute the strategy. There's not much more I can probably say or add to that, but hopefully, again, the track record that we've shown will give people confidence about what the headroom is likely to be as we go forward. In terms of current trading, we haven't made any comments in here on that today or given guidance on a few points as we go into FY 2023.
We'll obviously have our first quarter update coming up here shortly in September, and then we'll update everybody then on how the year's playing out. Then lastly, just on your question I think was on interest income. Is that right, at tastytrade?
Yeah, that's right, Charlie.
I think as you know, I mean, interest income for the group overall, you know, traditionally has not been very high, and that's because most of the funds, most of the client money funds in the group, they sit off balance sheet in segregated bank accounts, et cetera. Tastytrade balances are the one place, though, where we do have the ability to attract and get interest income. Now those balances are held off of our balance sheet. They're with our clearing agent itself, and we have a revenue-sharing arrangement with them around interest that comes off the back of that.
We operate off of an agreed formula that's geared to the Fed funds rate, so we aren't reliant on banks themselves to pass along rates or rate increases, as we would in other parts of the group. I think I said it at the half-year results, but the gearing ratio, you know, still stays the same, that roughly for every 25 basis points of Fed funds rate increases, that should put about $4 million of revenue into interest income for the business. As I said to one of the earlier questions, we've included some or a rate profile, some rate increases in our outlooks already.
As I said, you know, should that outlook change, should the Fed move in a faster, sharper way, then we would revisit our guidance and update it at that time. I don't think we're there yet right now. I hope that helps.
Yeah. Thanks, Charlie.
Yep, no problem.
There are no more questions at this time. I hand back to the webcast questions.
Yeah. On the webcast we have, "How do you see the outlook for the OTC derivatives business in terms of clients, client money, activity, and competition?" Let me start with that question. In terms of the overall market, we continue to see that there's a lot of interest in OTC derivatives across the business, as particularly indicated from our recent survey. Individuals that have chosen this particular category, especially high-quality clients like ours, will continue to trade. In terms of competition, what we are seeing is because we are very different in terms of the quality of the clients and also our business model, we see that we're seeing that that's reflected in the performance that we've just turned in, which is quite different and significantly more positive.
Over time, we would see that continuing, short of significant changes in their business model. On client money and activity, I'll turn that to Charlie.
Yeah. I think some of this we already answered with I think it was Richard's question about the outlook for active clients. As I said there, I think, you know, in the near term, we'd probably be looking at low single-digit, you know, % growth and then rising to high single-digit % as we go through our planning cycle over the next few years. In terms of client money, I mean, client money generally correlates with revenue, so I would point you probably to our medium-term guidance of 5%-7% over the next couple years for growth in the OTC business. Think of client money as kind of tracking along those same types of lines and quantums.
With that, there are no more questions in terms of the webcast.
Operator, are there any other questions on the line?
Yes. We have a follow-up question from the line of Ian White. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just one final question from my side, please. In terms of the performance at tastytrade in the second half of the year, obviously we saw a slowdown in activity versus the rates you were putting up in the first half. I just wondered, obviously, you've got access to much more details, information than we do. How important is just the direction of U.S. equities in explaining that, please? Obviously, you know, if you look at other markets, retail investors do tend to be sort of along with the market, a bit more difficult in U.S. markets over the last six months. How much of an impact has that had?
Basically, if we saw an improvement in U.S. market performance, would you expect that to translate into recovery in volumes at tastytrade, please? Thanks.
Yeah. Let me start with that. First of all, tastytrade did perform well versus the competitors in the U.S. market, and I think that is a result of, you know, all the things that we've put into place, so they have in place in competing in that market. They turned in 16% growth versus regular retail brokerage firms that have had double-digit declines. I think we have seen that their differentiated approach really does lead to better performance. Of course, as markets continue to improve, they'll also benefit from that. We see upside as the markets improve.
Thanks.
Okay, we have another question on the webcast: "Given the level of volatility recently, has there been any increase in the cost of hedging? And given excess capital, is there any view on changing the current policy? Thanks.
Yeah. This is Charlie. I'll take that. One of the questions that we're often asked at this time is what our conversion rate is, which I think gets to this question of the cost of hedging. Our conversion rate this year was actually 78%, that was up from 73% the prior year. Markets generally, I think, were easy for us over the course of FY 22 compared to FY 20 and parts of FY 21. It's been much more cost-effective for us to hedge in some of the markets that we've seen over the course of the past year. You know, I think that's a good outturn. I think as many of you know, I mean, we don't target a specific number here.
It's just an outcome or a byproduct of our risk management model, and we're very happy with how it's worked in the past year. Any views on changing the current policy? No.
The last question is from the line of Ben Bathurst from RBC. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks. I've just got a couple of quick follow-ups on Japan, if I may. You mentioned in the presentation a very targeted marketing strategy there. I just wondered how efficient has the marketing spend there been, and is it the case that it's enabled you to kind of grow revenues more quickly than you've grown your marketing spend? I also just wondered, can you give an idea around client retention levels in Japan? Are they showing similar characteristics to the general that you would see across your other OTC leverage markets? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks so much, Ben. This is June. Yes, in terms of targeted marketing, in particular, what works in Japan is search engine optimization, which was incredibly efficient, and influencers, which is another channel that has a very fast payback. We've been able to grow that market through great branding as well as the marketing disciplines that we've applied in terms of targeting the right channels and developing the right relationships with the right influencers. In terms of the client retention, we've seen the same type of retention as we've seen in all the other markets around the world. We're very excited about the potential in Japan. As I said, there are two million active traders in that market, and we currently have just a small fraction of them.
The last thing I would say is that we are now ranked number four in Japan from an infinitesimally small base, so lots of upside still. Thank you.
Great. Thanks for that.
I think that's it.
This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to June Felix for any closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for participating in today's session. Very good to have your questions. Looking forward to meeting many of you in person. Thanks again. This presentation has now ended.