On the call are Patricio Rojas, Chief Financial Officer, and Claudio Diaz, Senior Regional Finance Manager. Please be advised that this call is being recorded and that following the presentation, we will open the floor to questions from the audience in both English and Spanish. The video recording and transcripts of this call will be available on nuam's website within the next few days. I will now repeat this information for our Spanish-speaking participants. [Non-English content] Juan Pablo, good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. The floor is yours.
Thank you, Bruno. Hi, everyone. Thank you very much for joining the call. You have to become this thing. Thank you very much for joining the call, and welcome to the 2024 final earnings conference. Let me just start by indicating the agenda for the day. We have the main highlights of the company and the 2024 business performance, and our key takeaways. To sum up, I would say that the results are pretty good. We feel very satisfied with the results for the full year 2024. It's our first full-year integrated operation. For the first year, I think the results are pretty good, pretty solid, and interact with our expectations or slightly above our expectations, which is always good for, let's say, an endeavor of this nature.
I think that our first year has set a very strong footing in what we want to perform and what we set out to do. To start, in terms of financials, the financials, I guess, will not be a surprise as they continue to come in fairly as strong as they have in the first three quarters of the year. The final results for the year are $147 million in revenue, $64.9 million in EBITDA, and $38.1 million in net profit. In terms of revenue growth, this means 13% growth in our revenue stream dollars in the combined businesses, which again stresses the importance of our well-diversified business model, not only in business lines but also in the three countries. Our EBITDA margin up to 44% from 39%, a good 5% increase in EBITDA margins, which we feel very satisfied with. Net profits 22% higher.
We will talk a little bit about that. We have a one-off tax event at the end of the year that I'll comment on, which in the end ended up affecting the net profit. Overall, very good results. In terms of Q4 presented softer market activity, performance in the market was not as strong as we had seen particularly in the second and third quarters. Also, the results were affected by the FX depreciation, particularly in Colombia. That affected some of the numbers for the fourth quarter. As I mentioned, the one-off tax affected the net profit at the end of the year, which is a one-off of roughly $2.7 million associated to our holdings in Peru. We can go into that a little bit later.
In terms of market highlights, I think that overall, the year was a strong year for the region, for the three countries. Volumes were up 17% in total, which is pretty good given the economic and the political circumstances around the world. Good news for the nuam stock. We joined the IGPA index, so we're starting to meet the criteria for inclusion in indices, which is good news. We increased to two analysts covering the stocks, and we upgraded to two new market makers starting this month. We're working hard to improve liquidity and secondary market for our stock. Also, the date for the shareholders' meeting has been announced on 24 April. Very importantly, in that annual meeting, we will have the proposed dividend distribution, which will be CLP 181.86 per share, which is an increase of roughly 30% from last year.
We will also propose an increase in the dividend policy from 50% to 70%. Both, I think, going in the right direction, increasing the dividend per share, and for next year, increasing the payout ratio. In terms of our projects, we're reaching a very tough moment in the projects. We are set to go live 30 June, as you very well know, we are at this juncture with a lot of things on our plate. One is, of course, finalizing all internal technology and processes. Second is training and enabling the testing environment for our clients. Finally, having final approval from regulators. We have basically three months to get all these things done and wrapped up. It's pretty tough, but we're working very hard and committed to that end.
In terms of regulators, the good news is we've had very constructive conversations with them over the last, let's say, four to six weeks probably, and that has accelerated the process in the three countries. Remember that we have split the regulatory approval process in two. We will have the, let's say, first step. The first stage will be the harmonized trading rules in the three countries, but still operating separately. Then phase two will be when they allow us to operate as a single market. The first step is to have the same operational rules in the three countries, and that, as I mentioned, is going fairly well. We expect at least one of the countries hopefully to approve the rules later this month and the other two next month so that we will be ready for June. Some progress there.
Tough few months coming forward, but with the full commitment to putting in place this very important first step of our integration project in the equity market in particular. Those are the main, let's say, corporate highlights. In terms of markets, pretty much the same trends we saw throughout the year. The market cap was just slightly up 2%, but volumes in all markets were fairly strong last year, 11% growth in the equity market, 28% growth in fixed income, 9% growth in derivatives, 10% growth in FX, and clearing and settlement up, 23%. Custody, which is a stock, was down 2%, but this is mainly affected by the end-year Colombia depreciation, which was CLP 4,400. Today it's trading around CLP 4,040. I guess the picture was not pretty good at the end of the year, but the average assets under custody were higher than this.
That's basically the same trend we have seen all year. It was reaffirmed for the end of the year. In terms of quarter-on-quarter market performance, as I mentioned, the last quarter was particularly soft vis-à-vis the third quarter. We saw all of these numbers in dollar terms, negative mainly because of the depreciation and softer activity. If you go to the income statements and business performance. Full year income statements will have a 13% revenue growth to $147.6 million, as I mentioned at the beginning. Expenditures were up 2% to $95.3 million from $93.5 million. EBITDA at $64.9 million, up 28%, and net profit at $38.1 million with a 22% growth. As I mentioned, EBITDA growing in terms of EBITDA margin from 39% to 44%.
If we go to the next slide, looking at individual business lines, there you have basically what we have discussed. Particularly the post-trade business doing very well, growing at 22%, and all core businesses performing fairly well during the year. The other two business lines, information and value-added services, managed to grow slightly 3% and 2% respectively. The core business, as I mentioned, growing double digits mostly. Individually, listing and issuer services growing 6% in the year. This represents 12% of total revenues. Here we had significant activity in terms of new listings and new issuance in fixed income, particularly in Peru and then somewhat more activity in Colombia. Numbers are pretty strong, and 86% of revenues are associated to listing fees.
In the sense that if we have market activity in terms of new issuance, new bonds or follow-ons for existing equity products, we have a very stable revenue source there. Total revenue for listing and issuer services at $18.1 million. In terms of trading, well-diversified revenue line. It represents 15% of our total revenue, improved 14% full year in 2024. As I mentioned, it's well diversified, where you have 34% of that comes from equity trading, 33% from market access to different markets, but particularly the equity market, 24% fixed income, trading 6% derivatives, and then 3% other. In terms of equities volumes, up 11%, which I think is pretty good. Again, saying equity volumes up 11% given, let's say, economic and political conditions. 11% growth is pretty good, and the start of the year is also very strong.
In terms of fixed income volumes, up 30%. Note also that in the equity volumes, we have a 17% growth in number of trades, which means an increased retail activity, which is very important, and it's very important for our business moving forward. Particularly with the integrated trading platform, we want to stimulate retail activity, and we are seeing good life into the retail activity. Also to highlight derivatives. This is standardized derivatives mainly in Colombia, growing very strong. Of course, it's a small business line and small revenue line, but growing very strong at 72% year-on-year in terms of volumes, and to $72 billion. This has been the case given that pension funds are feeling more comfortable with using futures for some of their strategies, and we now have three pension funds actively participating in the market. Number of contracts growth was 200% growth.
Derivatives, it's a small business line, but growing strong. In terms of clearing and settlement, definitely the star of the year in 2024. Clearing is clearly a very important part of our strategy and very important part of our product offering in the three countries, and where we want to expand services moving forward. Also, as in the trading business line, very well diversified by market. We have 39% of the clearing revenue is coming from the equities clearing, 22% from derivatives, collateral management 10%, FX 10%, and fixed income 7%. Overall growth in clearing, 30% growth in the year to $27.6 million with more than 23% increase in volume for the previous year. Also to note, the open interest grew 14% to $37 billion.
This is an important number as well because as you grow open interest, that level of open interest tends to replicate itself year -over -year. It's a very stable source of revenue moving forward. Clearing and settlement, definitely the star of the year with 30% growth in the year and with a lot of opportunity for the future. Custody services, 17% growth, also well diversified revenue base with deposit services representing 35%, custody 28%, distribution processes, processing 23%, and other revenues at 15%. Let's say the end-year picture in terms of assets under custody is not pretty, but it's associated, as I mentioned, to the FX, particularly the depreciation in Colombia. $42.9 million in revenue coming from the custody business. Again, also a very solid and stable, let's say, revenue source and business for us.
In terms of the next two business lines, which are information and value-added services. Information represents 13% of our revenues, $19.4 million. It's also well diversified. Market data represents 48%, market access 27%, and our price vendor 25%. Well diversified. A lot of this line of business is indexed to the U.S. dollar. Also gives us, let's say, FX protection. We have in market data, a bit of a setback with one of the large, let's say, vendors halting the distribution of our services, particularly in Peru. That represented a decline of 1,700 clients and 18% decline. This is, let's say, a one-off event. Unfortunate. It gives us a lower base for 2025.
Hopefully we can recover not only the activity that we have with this vendor, with other vendors, but as we move closer to the integrated market, this is also a line of business where we want to grow. Information services, market data, and international distribution of our market data is a potential source of revenue in the future. In terms of our price vendor, the price vendor performed fairly well last year, and we have taken small steps, but steps in the right direction of expanding Precia into Peru and into Chile. We have done a couple of client events here in Chile over the last few months, and we should start seeing the signing of new clients in Chile starting this year is the plan. In value added services, again, the focus in value added services for 2024 was to recover credibility in the market.
We had had some setbacks in terms of quality of services and performance of our solutions. I think that is well under control right now. Still some challenges, of course, but we have managed to, let's say, revert some decisions by clients of not continuing with our service. We are continuing the service with some of those clients, and we have signed in new clients. We should start seeing this year new clients, and new, let's say, implementation profits in value added services, and basically the back office services strictly in Chile. I mean, the 50% of this revenue is the back office services in Chile. That's going well. The other two lines of business are in Peru and in Colombia, and those are growing fairly well, in terms of volumes and revenue. In terms of expenditures, no big surprise here.
I think you have these numbers well under control. Let's say the increase in expenditures is basically associated to depreciation allowances, and most of that is coming from the PPA, the incorporation of depreciation allowances from the PPA. We did the, let's say, the final adjustments to the PPA in Q3. We went through this in detail in Q3. All in all, it represents $4.5 million in additional depreciation allowances for 2024, and this will be a stable figure for the next five or so years. This is something that you will see in the next five years, the effect of the PPA depreciation. That's basically going very roughly over the financials. Again, I think very satisfactory first full year in operation of nuam.
Take into consideration that the challenge was not just to produce good financial results, but to integrate three companies, with 18 subsidiaries in three countries with three different cultures coming from three different origins. I think that we did a reasonably good job of creating, let's say, the sense of a single company, a single corporation, a single working team, building a new culture for this company. That was very significant also activity. You can't see it in numbers, but it took a lot of time and effort. Also work with the regulators. Work with regulators, even though we did not have the rules that we wanted published, allowing the integrated market, I think we have made tremendous headways into the building of trust and constructing a new vision with regulators in three countries.
With ups and downs, as you know, I think we're moving in the right direction. As I mentioned, between now and end of May, we should be seeing the first stage of the regulatory approvals being published in the three countries. Good year. A lot of work, but it's very satisfactory to be able to transmit to you the very positive results of 2024. Again, 13% revenue growth amidst a very difficult year in terms of corporate integration and the economic and political environment in the region. EBITDA margins increasing to 44% from 39%, working strongly and without distraction in our projects, to create the new single market for the three countries. The following chart, I will not go into detail, but it's just to indicate how busy we will be over the next few months.
Each triangle in this graph indicates a go live of one of the systems in one of the countries. Blue is Chile, red is Peru, and yellow is Colombia. That is to say, the amount of activity that will be taking place beginning in the second, I mean, the end of the second quarter of this year or beginning of third quarter of this year, up until first quarter of 2026. A lot of activity going on, a lot of, I guess, synchronization between our own teams and our clients' teams and regulators. Hopefully we will, in 12 months time, we sit here and we can convey to you that all of this has been implemented successfully. Very busy next 9 - 12 months.
Finally, to wrap it up, we have also announced the time for the shareholders' meeting, April 24th at 11:00 A.M. Santiago time. For those of you who want to be in person, it is at the W Hotel here in Santiago. One of the main topics, of course, the election of the new board. As you know, our statutes indicate that the current board will be reduced from 16 board members to 11 board members. It is election of the new board with the new size of board, so 11 members in the board. We will, of course, present the annual report, the financial statements for approval, and the profit distribution proposal, which as I mentioned, corresponds to CLP 181.86 per share, which implies a 30% increase from last year's dividend.
There will be a single payment on May 9th, and it will be done to individuals holding the shares four days prior to May 9th. We will also modify the policy, the dividend distribution policy, from a minimum 50% to 70%. Expect a higher payout ratio next year as we complete this year the big investment in the integration projects. Also on the board, the election of the external auditor, it has to be renewed every year, and the proposal for the compensation of the board of directors and the community members. That is basically it. I think that good first year, good results, on track, working towards the goal of creating an integrated market.
It will probably not be as quick as we had anticipated, we continue to work in that direction, both with market participants, very important to have our clients on board, and of course, regulators. I will stop there and open up for questions. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Juan Pablo. We will now open the floor to questions from the audience. If you'd like to participate, please raise your hand and we will unmute your microphone. Questions may also be written in the chat section of the outline. [Non-English content] It seems that we have the first question. Mr. Adonay Félix, see if you can please unmute his microphone.
Hello. Good morning. Adonay Félix from Apalache. Thank you very much for the call, and congratulations for the results. I have three questions. The first one is about employee benefits. We noticed that they increased 14%. Could you give us more color on where this increase came from? My second question is about CapEx. What is your estimate for 2025? Finally, what is your EBITDA margin expectation for this year?
Just a second. Thank you, Félix. Just a second, please.
Yeah. Okay. Employee benefits, basically covers everything. It's salaries plus bonds and benefits, including training and other benefits. It's all encompassing name. You basically have a few things. One is, we reduced the number of staff, but inflation in 2023 was pretty high in these countries. We have, almost by law, if not by law, we need to adjust salaries by inflation. If you take integration, for example, inflation in Colombia, which was 9%, so salaries were increased 9% in Colombia, a few, I mean, 4% and 5% in Peru and Chile, respectively. Adjusted by inflation, that's an important figure. Also tied to the restructuring, there was some, let's say, salary adjustments for new responsibilities in individuals.
Individuals who were, let's say, a local manager now becomes a regional manager, has further responsibilities, and that, in itself implied an increase in the salary just because it has more breadth and responsibility. Finally, what we did last year, is to harmonize the bonus structure in the three countries. Today every staff participates in the same, let's say, compensation scheme, where you have your base salary and your short-term bonus scheme. Given the results for the year, that implied an increase in overall compensation. Finally, marginally, throughout the year, we had some incorporation of new staff, new profiles that we didn't have internally in the company, but that shouldn't be that significant in the results. It's really a combination of all of these things. We hope that as inflation stabilizes in the three countries, we should start seeing less pressure on that account.
In terms of CapEx for this year, integration projects, as you know, last year, we approved a budget of $20 million. This year, the integration projects budget is $12 million. It's lower than last year, and we have roughly $ 8 million for ongoing IT, another investment. Roughly this year, CapEx overall is $20 million, down from $28 million from 2024. In terms of EBITDA, as I mentioned in our last call, we have a challenge this year for operational margins, because we will have a little bit of double counting this year in terms of licenses for the new systems, while we have not been able to decommission the old system. 2025 will be a transition year.
I will not bet on a significant increase in the EBITDA margin for this year, given that we will have that double expenditure, which is roughly $4 million in additional license costs this year, which we will compensate in the following years. We need to have a gradual decommissioning plan for the existing systems. It's not like we can turn on one system and turn off the other the same day. It takes time to decommission those systems. There will be a little bit of overlap, which begins with an increase in license fees this year.
Thank you, Adonay, for your question. We'll go now over one that's written in the chat. The question says, in Spanish. [Non-English content]
A couple of things. Yes, we need to restructure our businesses. As I mentioned, we have many businesses, and we're going to be restructuring. The other element has to do with also focusing on our core competencies and our core businesses. I think some of the businesses have a better projection growing regionally than others, and we would like to focus on those businesses. As I mentioned, for example, the information, the price in Precia, we're looking to expand that into Peru and Chile. Which means that the specific business that we have reclassified is indeed part of a conversation where we can probably divest. We cannot confirm that right now. If it were to be divested, it needed to be reclassified, as you indicate.
In terms of prices, we cannot disclose anything right now because we have not finalized any discussions on that account. You may expect in the next year or so some reshuffling of the smaller subsidiaries that we have that allows us to concentrate in our core business, core competencies, and where we think we can provide more value to our clients and hopefully grow the business faster than by concentrating the smaller endeavors.
[Non-English content] We don't see any further hands raised in the chat. We have just received another question. The question this time comes from Ana Maria Laura. The question reads, [Non-English content]
I think we all share the same concern. I think analysts and different market participants agree that the price of the stock does not fully reflect both the current business performance and future evolution of the business. This is mainly tied to the liquidity trap problem that we seem to be in. This is an issue of discussion. We have moved to providing two market makers beginning this month, as I mentioned. We continue to work with other market participants to see how we can have some of the blocks available for sale, change hands so that we have less of an overhand on the price of the stock.
In the end, we feel very confident that if we perform as we have performed in 2024 and continue to deliver the results, not only financial results, but towards the construction of the new integrated market, eventually the price of the stock will reflect the real value of the company. We are concerned, as everybody else is, working as much as we can to contribute to enhancing liquidity in the stock and facilitating blocks to be traded, and focusing on delivering the results that we are set out to deliver.
[Non-English content] We don't seem to have any further questions in the chat or by raise of hands. Perhaps, Juan Pablo , if you have final thoughts before we finish.
Of course. Okay, if there's no further questions, again, thank you very much. I think that from the staff and the administration, we're very satisfied with the results for 2024. The challenges in 2025 are steep, both financially, as I mentioned, because of the new expenditures that we'll have to accommodate coming from the new systems that we are implementing, but more importantly, from the steps that we are going to implement in terms of advancing towards constructing the integrated market, starting at the end of June. Challenging year, but exciting year. I think that once we set the foundation for the integrated market, I think credibility in the process will be enhanced, and I think that will also reflect credibility in the price of the stock.
We will continue to work very hard towards this end, building trust with regulators, working with our clients, and, hopefully delivering the ambitious goals that we set out to deliver through this 2025. Thank you very much. Thanks for joining, and see you all at the annual shareholders meeting. Sorry, we have a couple of additional questions, so we're going to take them.
In a written manner, we have two questions during the final thoughts. First question. [Non-English content]
[Non-English content]
[Non-English content]
Yes, of course. It's already disclosed in our financial statements. It is Fintree. It is a small business we have here in Chile related to products and services for farms, especially. It is a small business.
Great. Thank you for that, thank you, Patricio, for your call, for your question as well. The very last question in Spanish. [Non-English content]
This question, I think it is perfectly consistent with we have announced since day one, which was we have a concentration in investments in 2024 and 2025. That was the reason why we announced that we would be reducing the dividend payout to 50%. As we complete the bulk of the investments, as I mentioned, it'll be $40 million in the two years. As we complete those investments in 2025, we feel that we can move back towards a higher payout ratio beginning in 2026. This is perfectly consistent with the initial plan. As you saw, the numbers for 2024 delivered what we had anticipated. We see that we can continue with that plan. As we consolidate an EBITDA of roughly $ 60 million-$65 million, we should be okay with the investments going forward without any, let's say, retaining additional earnings from our shareholders.
That, I think that the plan is perfectly consistent with the investment profile that we expect.
Thank you, Manuel, for your questions, and thank you, everybody.
Thank you.