HUB24 Limited

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr Andrew Alcock, Managing Director. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome everyone to the HUB24 financial year 26 full year results announcement. We acknowledge the traditional custodians of lands on which we meet today. Our office here in Sydney is on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples with us today. It's a pleasure to be here today talking to you about our results. And with me, of course, is Katrina Shanahan, our Chief Financial Officer. We'll be covering some highlights of an operating view of our business, talking about our financial results in a bit more detail, covering strategy and outlook, and then opening up for some questions. As always, we remain focused on our customers to support them and achieve their financial goals through our purpose of empowering better financial futures together, which we take very, very seriously in our business. Thank you very much. whilst at the same time increasing that engagement through innovating technology and leveraging that technology to improve customer experience. Today, we service or look after about 600,000 customer accounts across the Hub24 business. It's quite a large number, and we take that very seriously. We're very, very focused on building a sustainable business that drives outcomes for customers and shareholders. Turning to our FY26 results, highlights and operating review, We had strong profits for the year, uplifts in both revenue and earnings. On the revenue side, our group revenue is up at just over half a billion dollars, up 23%, the platform at $407 million, up 26%, and tech solutions also up 9% at $84 million. Translating into underlying EBITDA, for the total group, result of 211.4, which is also up 30% on PCP. Platform up 31% at 186.7 and tech solutions up 29.3 at 8%. That's resulting in a set NPAD of 120 mil up 51%, a strong underlying NPAD up 40% at 137.3, a fully franked final dividend at 42 cents per share, which is 31% up on last year. and underlying EPS diluted at 166.7 cents per share. Very, very strong results, very, very consistent results along with our track record. And in terms of how we finished FY26 with funds under administration, the total FUR of 164.3, platform at 139.5 as previously reported. It was 144.1 as at the 13th of August last week. and our pass were at $24.8 billion. And I'm sure we'll unpack some of those statistics and figures a bit later on in the presentation. Putting the FY26 results into context of our long-term performance trend, you can see on the left-hand side of the slide there that we have a four-year CAGR of 27% group revenue increase and underlying EBITDA four-year CAGR of 32%, which demonstrates increasing margins. So long-term consistent growth trends there are both revenue and EBITDA. and with an indicator of revenue, the key indicator being FUA, seeing the CAGR of funds under administration also at 26% over a four-year period. In summary, we continue to deliver strong, consistent growth in terms of revenue, lead indicators and profitability, and we certainly aim to continue doing that moving forward. Summarising our achievements and highlights for FY26, Certainly from a leadership and growth perspective, we've been focused on our strategy to lead today with record net inflows of $18.9 billion, if you exclude the large migrations or one-off migrations from last year. Our annual offers are gaining strong market traction. We'll talk about that a bit later in the presentation. Our largest annual increase in class accounts since 2018 and now infinity growing at twice or more than twice the system growth. At the same time as delivering those leading results, we've been executing our strategy having commenced development of the evolution of our ecosystem now known as MyHub, a wealth tech solution that's integrating leading advice technology with our group capabilities, licensee capabilities, and other capabilities in the market. Engage is also still racing along with our 7,200 advice practice users. We've enhanced our proposition for all life stages of customers, including the launch of innovative retirement solutions. We'll talk about that a bit later in the pack as well. and Class and Now Infinity delivering on a multi-year enhancement program. We've also continued to lay foundations for the future. We've aligned our organization to drive execution and strategy with Jason Hare starting with us last week as our Chief Innovation and Operating Officer. We've brought together key people in our business into an enterprise solutions team focused on building the enterprise solutions that service both our tech solution and the platform business, like Engage, like MyHub, like HubConnect Licensee and our data products, bringing that together to build that for the future. We are certainly continuing to leverage off innovative technologies with AI helping us with customer value proposition offers. We'll talk a bit about some things that are coming up shortly and also underpinning operating efficiency in the business. It's been a year to be active, actively advocating on behalf of our customers and our industry for positive change, with a strong focus on risk and governance system announcements tomorrow in Canberra with Dr Molino, resulting from the Shield and First Guardian piece and all the consultation papers the government and Treasury was doing with our industry. We'll certainly be strongly advocating for that for great retirement settings and good settings for consumers and members. And we're making great progress on bringing the Hub24 Superfund trustee in-house, which we hope to have completed by the end of this calendar year. So a lot of a mix there in terms of what we're doing with our products, our strategy and laying foundations for the future. As a result, though, once again, we have grown our market share ahead of the market. Hub24 as a platform is now ranked number six up from position seven last year with 9.9% or just shy of 10% market share. As a participant, we've increased our market share by more than any other participant at 1.3% over the last 12 months. And we've had the number one net inflows for 10 consecutive quarters against our industry. Interestingly, the industry itself is growing with $45 billion of new net flows over the last available data at the 12-month period with a PCP of $36 billion. So we're growing strongly. We're increasing our market share. We're gaining market share faster than our competitors in an industry that is also growing. And you overlay that with the trend and the amount of people looking to retire and the success of Australia's supermotion system, it'll go as well for a very strong growth profile for the business moving forward. Looking through that on an advisor lens, There are now 37% of advisors in Australia using HUB24. On the left-hand side of the slide, you can see that increase in 21% in June 2022 to 37% in June 2026. Continual ongoing growth with a four-year cadence of 13%. Our market share having doubled from 5.1% in 2022 to 9.9%, almost doubling at 9.9% over the last four years as well. Look at the advisor scenario in the business. Our business has significant growth opportunity from both existing and new advisors. Once again, you can see the mix there of reliable, recurring revenue driven from flows from existing licensees and advisor relationships. at about 83%, a slight uptick. I think that represents the increasing share of book or share of customers that advisors are choosing to put on Hub24, but also seeing success in us getting 14% of our new flows from new advisors that belong to existing relationships we have in the market and 3% from new licensee relationships altogether. A strong lead indicator for our future growth, there were 552 new advisors actively using Hub24 in FY26, taking us up to $5,649. That all goes well for ongoing flows from existing, but also new flows from new advisors. So a great lead indicator moving ahead. And our share of funds under administration per advisor was up to $25 million, up from $14 million in FY22. We certainly hope to continue that trend of winning share from advisors. Having said that, having said that they... Transition typically takes six years for new advisor relationships to move the bulk or the portion of their bulk they're moving to Hub24 over. So the industry average for her advisor is $83 million. We've got an average of 25, a long runway there for existing advice, particularly when you consider the accolades and our position in the marketplace and plenty of growth to pick up new advisor relationships as we have done in FY26 as well. So we are continuing to support existing and new advisors through our strategy and our executions. Very pleased to be able to once again summarise our recognition from customers and industry researchers with the next slide from the Investment Trends Competitive Analysis and Benchmarking Report, our number one platform overall for four years running and you can see the other accolades there, Best Product Offering, Decision Support Tools, Reporting and Online Business Management. In Investment Trends Advisor Technology Needs Report, number one NPS, number one for actual advocacy and a host of awards are there as well. and in the investment trends managed accounts, we bought number one for overall satisfaction. Turning to advisor ratings, also number one in terms of NPS, and we ranked first in nine platform categories with advisor ratings and for Wealth Insights, also number one for NPS for all platform users with a range of number ones there as well. So a great result for us. We work very hard at it and we hope to continue to do in the future.

Taking a look at our tech solutions businesses,

with Class having a stable market share of about 30.5% and Growing having the highest growth, largest annual increase in accounts since FY18. Interestingly, we believe superannuation is more and more attractive moving ahead with the economic policy settings the government announced recently in terms of a great vehicle for people to grow their wealth for their future. Dow Infinity having a market share of 25.2% on the corporate messenger side and growing at 2.1 times system growth. So great results there from Class and now Infinity, but also both recognised as industry leading solutions with Class ranked number one in innovation and brand awareness in the Investment Trends 2026 SMSF report. And now Infinity also ranked number one for the most used legal document provider and number two for brand awareness. So examples of all of our business leading today with that strategic pillar. And we're very proud to be able to talk to you about that. We'd like to acknowledge our amazing and focused team. And I say that very clearly. Our team is very focused on customer outcomes. And you see that in the awards and the recognition from our customers. We believe in our purpose and we act accordingly. Certainly, we are investing in our people in terms of leadership and talent. We're investing in career growth across all levels of business and empowering female leaders for long-term success. We also have award-winning graduate and early careers programs that strengthen our future talent pipeline. We're a very values-led culture and organisation, driving strong performance with 80% employment engagement, ranking Hub24 in the top quarter of employee engagement. We have a diverse workforce and flexible, collaborative, inclusive workplace that aims to attract and retain talent. And of course, we're building a future-ready workforce, strengthening our executive team with recent appointments, using AI and technology to drive productivity and growth. and innovating for the future with our innovation incubator or innovation lab, building talent and capability. If you turn to our ESG focus, our focus is clearly on building a robust and sustainable business, as seen through our results, and it's echoed in our sustainability priorities. On the right-hand side there, you can see our focus areas, and there's more details in our published reports about our ESG areas. On the left-hand side, some progress. clearly delivering for our customers market-leading NPS, high employee engagement. We've made significant progress towards our 2030 net zero goal for scope one and two emissions, and we've adopted the AASB S2 climate-related disclosures, maintaining a whole lot of gender diversity targets across the business and continued commitment to United Nations Global Compact. The role we play... It's very important for our community and we're very focused on that. We are committed in Hub24 to robust governance and advocating for a stronger retirement system. Superannuation in our country is 34 years old. Trust is very, very important to play the role we play to help Australians take choice and ownership and engagement for their future. And there's an expectation of strong governance. We're certainly committed to that. We have a continued focus on robust governance and consumer protection. We've been actively collaborating with the financial services council, in fact, to build standards that the industry can adopt. We're working to move the Hub24 trustee inside the business and certainly working with the trustee to ensure that governance practices align with customer regulator expectations moving ahead. We've been championing PerpChoice. are actively championing for choice for people to take control of their money and their superannuation, their retirement savings, to have the flexibility and the right choice they need, and advocating for greater access to quality financial advice and playing a role very seriously in the Australian financial services community. We don't want people left behind. We don't want us to be looking behind. We want to be looking forward and ahead and shaping great outcomes for our industry and better outcomes for Australians. I'd now like to hand over to Katrina Shanahan to give you an update on our financial results.

Thank you, Andrew. So moving to the financial slide, we have the group snapshot with the group revenue of just over 500 mil, 501.1 million, and underlying EBITDA of 211.4 million. Platform segment contributes the majority with 406.9 million revenue and 186.7 million underlying EBITDA and 5,649 advisors actively using the platform at the 30th of June. Tech Solutions, which comprises the Class Business, Now Infinity and HubConnect businesses, delivered $84 million of revenue and $29.3 million of underlying EBITDA across over 6,800 financial professionals. Okay, so moving to the next slide, we have the group results reflecting strong operating leverage with revenue growing 23% to $501.1 million and operating expenses growing 19% to $289.7 million. The strong positive jaws delivering 30% growth in underlying EBITDA to $211.4 million and underlying EBITDA margin expansion of 2.3% to 42.2% for the group for the year. EBITDA, including share-based payments, grew 33% to $198 million. Underlying net profit after tax up 40% to $137.3 million. and statutory net profit after tax up 51% to $120.2 million. Okay, so turning to the platform segment, platform custody FUA grew 24% to $139.5 billion, with total FUA, including the past non-custody, up 20% to $164.3 billion. Platform net inflows were 18.9 billion in full year 26, with no large migrations during the year. On a headline basis, that's 4% down on last year. However, when you exclude the 4 billion of large migrations in full year 25, underlying net flows are up 20% year on year. Positive markets also contributed 7.9 billion during the year for the custody filler. In the platform total segment, the revenue grew 26% to 406.9 mil, expenses were up 31% to 186.7 million, lifting the underlying EBITDA to 31% to 186.7 million and expanding margins growing to 45.9%, up 1.7% on full year 25. Okay, so continuing on with the platform segment, This slide shows the tight relationship between the FUA and the revenue growth. Platform revenue is up 26% to close to $407 million, which is tracking FUA growth closely over the five-year period, which you can see in the graph on the right-hand side. The bottom graph on the right-hand side, custody revenue margin declined one bit over the year, driven by a reduction in admin fees from fee tiers and caps as account balances grow. In the second half, there was a reversal of the benefit from the first half where the seasonally higher cash balances. Platform underlying EBITDA grew 31% to 186.9 mil, a four-year CAGR of 32%. Growth came from higher sewer and associated revenue, partly offset by continued investment in people and resources to support growth and our strategic objectives. Martin expanded 1.7% to 45.9%, demonstrating the scale benefits in the model while we continue to invest in the strategy and future opportunities that we can see.

Okay, so moving to tech solutions.

Tech solutions delivered underlying EBITDA growth of 8% to $29.3 million, with revenue up 9% to $84 million. which included price increases and volume growth. And as Andrew said, the class accounts have the best year in the last four to five years. Class accounts are up 5% to just under 227,000. Operating expenses are up 10% year on year with a full year inclusion of share registry feed costs. And we also started a multi-year program of enhancements to the Now Infinity software. That left underlying EBITDA margins slightly lower at 34.9%. Okay, moving to group expenses and margins. Total expenses excluding acquisition amortization increased 18%, with the biggest drivers being employment-related costs, with employee numbers up 14%. We had just over 1,000 employees, with 1,096 employees at the 30th of June. And administration costs are also up year-on-year. You can see that in the graph on the right-hand side, up $14 million year-on-year. And this represents the growth in our suppliers, which also includes external technology suppliers.

Okay, moving to profitability.

Profitability grew strongly with underlying MPAT up 40% and statutory MPAT up 51% to $120 million. The effective tax rate for the year was 17%, which is down from 20% in full year 25. This reflects the timing impacts of purchases and utilization of treasury shares for the service of the employee share plan and also includes R&D benefits for the group. Okay, moving along, we have the balance sheet and cash provision, which both remain very strong. Operating cash flows for the year were $197.5 million. with a 93% correlation to underlying EBITDA and a four-year CAGR of 34% for group operating cash flows. Some of the uses of cash in the year, as I mentioned on the previous slide, $56 million of treasury share purchases to service the employee share scheme. There was $75 million drawdown in the year for the Superfund Operational Risk Financial Requirements, the author capital for the Superfund. That's a total loan of $78 million at the 30th of June. And we've also included in this slide a quick note at the bottom that when we insource the trustee, which is expected, as Andrew mentioned, later this calendar year, it's nominal consideration and we're not expecting material movements to be underlined even for the group for that transition. Okay, on the last financial slide, we have the fully frank dividends. So we have the 42 cents per share dividend up 31% year on year. That takes the total dividends for full year 26 to 78 cents up 39% year on year. And we have a dividend four-year CAGR of 41% and a total shareholder return four-year CAGR of 39% for the year.

With that, I'll hand back to Andrew for the strategy and the outlook.

Thanks, Katrina.

Our strategy remains consistent to build on our success to date, and it's captured on this slide here. We certainly tend to deliver shareholder value through leading to date. That's the left-hand side of the slide. With a strong growth outlook in our existing established business, it's the Hub24 platform. We're positioned to increase its market share from the current 10% and to continue to benefit from industry transformation and class and now infinity accelerating growth supported by structurally growing markets with an ongoing investment in those businesses as well. But taking the opportunity to create additional customer and shareholder value as our industry continues to transform, and there's some trends and environment that's certainly much placed to this, which we'll talk about on the next slide, with increasing demand and the need for technology to solve industry problems. So creating additional shareholder value through our technology strategy, talking about MyHub, which is bringing our ecosystem together, and Hub24 investing in solutions that continue to lead and continue to transform the industry, leveraging our capabilities as a group to build outcomes that provide great outcomes for financial advisors and their clients, enhancing the client experience, leveraging our unique data capability, which we'll talk about in a few slides as well, to provide secure and integrated access to high-quality data to get better outcomes for advisors and their customers, and strengthening our advocacy and leveraging the group footprint to deliver more products for more customers through the building of that technology Supporting growth of the platform, Class and Now Infinity, and our tech solutions and our technology businesses together, transforming and working together to create today, sorry, to lead today and also create future value for tomorrow. We believe we are uniquely positioned to capitalise on structurally growing markets and industry transformation. There is a strong set of tailwinds in our industry and strong growth we expect to be driven by those tailwinds. Superannuation system is growing. That will be reinforced, we believe, by the proposed tax changes, which are making superannuation an attractive vehicle for growing wealth compared to property and other asset classes. There is a demand for retirement solutions as superannuation retirees are retiring with more in their NST than they thought. and more and more each year. It's now 34 years old. So every year, there are additional Australians retiring with additional funds than previously thought. And there's demand for advice and solutions to support that growth so that people can take control of their employment outcomes. Intergenerational wealth transfer and the demand for advice continuing to increase. So strong tailwinds for our industry for growth. The industry dynamics themselves are also favourable. There's an ongoing shift towards leading providers. offering a better client experience and outcomes. We see ourselves as one of those leading providers. There's the emergence of large-scale advice networks leveraging technology and scale. The complexity issue is still there in our industry and we seek to solve that in terms of solving compliance issues and data issues to drive productivity for advice firms and emerging technologies and new global capabilities such as AI creating opportunities for advanced efficiency. There is a demand for safe, reliable, and trusted solutions, and we certainly are investing in our industry to do that and continue to be an industry leader. And there's significant market share opportunity with the platform consolidation of 80% of industry net flows captured by two platforms over the last year. We've had 24, capturing 45% of those. And 42% of advisors are now using a single platform for new account openings over the last 12 months, with a further 38% using two platforms. That's really interesting when you think about the utility and the range of products and services that we offer through our platform, which we'll also cover in the next couple of slides as well. It means we can cover more client use cases and for more advisors. Looking at how we focused on this strategy on one page, on the left-hand side, our four strategic pillars are there, Lead Today, Create Tomorrow. Built together, we certainly see ourselves as an industry participant that is open architecture, Working across the industry to bring the best off-breed solutions together for our clients and also thinking about our future and making sure we are ready for what's yet to come. We do that to be the best provider of integrated platform technology and data solutions. That's certainly our vision. And the graphic there looks at our capabilities across our business and how we intend to integrate those and wrap them around with MyHub. All aimed to enhance productivity for financial professionals and deliver solutions that meet the needs of customers across their life cycle. Looking at that life cycle on the next stage, Hub24 is solving customer needs across multiple segments and life stages. Whether you're starting out or you're in wealth drawdown and preservation or you're undergoing intergenerational wealth transfer, we have a range of solutions across our businesses to cater for those different life stages and certainly to cater for them with different client demographics. The mass market, mass affluent and private wealth, high net wealth type clients as well. With a range of solutions from our simple discover superannuation offer to through to Private Invest, which is a wholesale-only investor solution as well, which has non-customary assets as well as the Hub24 platform with it. So a range of solutions, as I said earlier. Advisors are more or more choosing to use one platform for new business. It's partly because the scope of our platform does cater for those different life stages and those different client demographics as well in one easy-to-navigate ecosystem where you can move across different products over time. As an example of that, we have continued in FY26 to expand our superannuation offer to meet customer needs, empowering our advisors with greater confidence for retirement. We enhanced that by adding lifetime superannuation solution. It's an innovative iris, they call it an iris, in partnership with TAO, providing income for life, managing longevity risk, and getting concessional treatment for central asset tests, and pension payment flexibility is also enhancing the retirement space in this year. The demand for super retirement solutions is growing with $4.4 trillion of super assets, expected to grow to $11.2 by 2043, and 3.6 million Australians transition to retirement over the next 20 years. 68% of Australians say they're worried about outliving their retirement savings, which is why one of the solutions we added, the IRS, plays to that particular need, providing guaranteed income for life. And we're continuing to innovate and provide efficiency and enhance the client experience Some of the other features we had during the year was a multi-step transitions enhancement, a digital capability allowing advisors to seamlessly execute complex advice strategies at the same time, avoiding the need to be out of the market, allowing customers to move from accumulation to pension or re-contribution to pension with greater efficiency and accuracy and not having the risk of being out of the market while they implement those strategies, which in some cases for our competitors take three to four weeks. Another example this year is our leading high net worth offer, expanding our reach of our platform across segments and delivering growth. We are recognised as the number one platform overall for high net worth focused advisors with flexible tailored offerings across those channels. We have a large growing footprint. We launched Private Invest. It's an innovative solution for wholesale clients. It's now contributing greater than a billion dollars of FUA in less than 12 months operation. It has integrated non-custodial assets as well as assets in custody on the Hub24 platform and a reporting service. There's a significant opportunity for high net wealth solutions with $4 trillion of high net wealth assets across 760,000 investors and 35% of advisors primarily focused on that. Not to take away from our previous slide, which talked about superannuation, which drives resilient ongoing flows into our business as well with a very strong footprint in superannuation for accumulation and a strong footprint in high net wealth as well. Turning to MyHub, in addition, MyHub on the page here gives a graphic for how MyHub is bringing together the Hub24 ecosystem of Class, HubConnect, the platform and the businesses that we own. There's a couple of businesses in there, Investstream and Advice Design, which we have minority investments with. Bringing that together, that ecosystem together to work with practice technology on the left-hand side, the tools and advice practices have, and integrate that seamlessly in a modular and open architecture ecosystem designed to get better outcomes for clients, designed to get better outcomes for advisors, allow advisors to see more customers and see them more efficiently. Certainly our strategy to continue to transform and change the shape of how platforms work with advice in the Australian industry. There'll be a progressive rollout of MyHub from 1 to 27. There's integrated AI prompts around the platform that will be coming out shortly. We have an AI-enabled advice review tool that we're in conversation with large licensees. They can use our advice review tool to put their advice documents pre- and post-publishing through to look for compliance issues and speed up that process of getting advice to market. That's a commercial offering that we're taking to market as part of MyHub. The Engage reporting, also part of my hub, is expanding to include customer data being fed through from Class, where Class has hundreds of data feeds from across different financial services providers in the industry. And we're collaborating with our customers and partners to streamline the advice process across the board with small practices through large national groups as well by bringing the best that we have and the best that market has in an ecosystem that's open and flexible. So moving ahead, there's a significant opportunity for growth. and value creation for both our customers and our shareholders. We're very excited at the position we have in the market and certainly focused on delivering more as we move ahead. We have structurally growing markets and the demand for integrated solutions is increasing. We see our role as closing that gap and allowing more people to get advice and growing our market and the addressable market. Strong and reliable growth for Hub24 from existing and new customers as we covered. a continued focus on governance and risk culture and great customer outcomes, leveraging our unique footprint to unlock value and leverage our technology leadership with a scalable operation enabling both EBITDA growth and margin expansion as well as ongoing investment at the same time. Our balance sheet is strong, we're profitable, we have robust cash flows and we are generating great shareholder returns. We've updated our FIWA target for FY28 So at the end of FY28, we expect to be in the range of $186 to $200 billion of funds under administration. That target comprises ongoing growth, and Katrina, I'm sure, will unpack that for us a bit later, and a range of market growth assumptions. That's up from a target of $160 to $170 billion at the end of FY27. So looking forward a year later than that, it's $16 billion up at the end the bottom of the range and $200 billion at the top of the range there. I'd now like to open up for any questions and hand it over to yourselves on the line.

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star 2. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. In the interest of time, we ask that analysts please limit themselves to one question and one follow-up question. Your first question, it comes from Saran Jayathasan with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Thank you, guys, for taking my questions. So just a first question on net flows, please. So importantly, net flows in the second half slowed down quite materially on the first half. And compositionally, there seems to have been a step up in gross outflows as well. So just if you can help us understand this a little bit, are you attributing most of that slowdown to the post-budget environment? Or is there something else we should be aware of? And if it is post-budget related, then do you expect this to normalize? When do you expect this to normalize? Should we be thinking that there's a sharp redeployment of funds that's just sitting on the sidelines as one of your peers has implied? And just how are you thinking about the FY27 in context of all of this, please?

Thank you.

It's a logical conclusion that it has something to do with the budget and the prevailing economic conditions. If you unpack that, our superannuation flows are very resilient. In fact, we saw them tick up in the last quarter. And so it's a story of two different parts of our book of business. The superannuation business is growing. In fact, our gross flows for the first part of FY27 are up on last year. But there is an uptick in outflows in discretionary funds under administration, i.e. the IDPS book, which you see that happens frequently in certain economic conditions. And so it's logical to suggest that the budget settings are driving people thinking differently about how they invest in the future. And I think that's just a time basis. If you look at the fundamental lead indicators in our business with the demographic trends, the number of advisors using the platform, I think it just is timing. And we'll see that settle down as people get their settings certain for the future. And we're still waiting for some certainty about some of the legislation around the budget. So I see that as just part of what's going on at a macro level, not an indicator of our business. All the lead indicators for our business are strong and robust. in fact, stronger than they were 12 months ago. If you look at them indicatively in terms of gross flows and advisors, it's an economic cycle and we go through those periods from time to time.

Okay, thank you. And perhaps just a follow-on question just around the competitive environment now that your peer has launched its individual thin capability for private wealth and stockbroking clients. I assume private invest is your equivalent solution. Firstly, is that correct? Yes. I think you've called roughly 1 billion of FUA who are there. How are you thinking about the growth trajectory for that product and what are the economics like for you?

Private Invest is a solution for that part of the market. We have far more FUA in other high net worth products as well. So we've got exposure to high net worth clients in our core, sorry, in our choice platform and in non-custodial services. Private Invest is a little bit different in that it's an MIS scheme. that has different treatment for the wholesale investor test. So it's not representative of our only foray into that market. It makes it easier with different settings to use that product. It's been in the market for a short period of time, but we've, for a long period of time, been in the high net worth space, for a long period of time, been dealing with broker clients, with Evans & Partners and Auburnet being key marketing clients in that space. And so we're very, very comfortable with our value proposition there. We've got a dedicated team. As for NetWell solution, I'm happy for them to talk about that. But from our perspective, we've been in this part of the market for a long period of time. And we're ranked number one according to investment trends in that capability set. Okay, thank you.

And if I could sneak in just the third question around HTFS. I know that you'll complete the acquisition in the first half of 2017. You flagged that it should be either done neutral. But from what I understand, APRA have imposed some license conditions, and part of that is an independent expert to be appointed to review everything. So just if you can provide us with some color around this process, what the milestones are, and any risks that you think are worth highlighting or costs associated to that process.

Sure, there will be some costs in our run rate for the project to bring HTFS inside. Those licence conditions are imposed on HTFS, which we don't own. It's owned by EQT and their obligations that EQT is working on, we're working on with them. And so we do expect the trustee when it's in-house to be neutral to us from a cost perspective. We're maintaining that view. In terms of some of the milestones, we're very, very comfortable with our investment governance processes. You'd be aware that we didn't have exposure to Shield and First Guardian. The license conditions on the licensee are similar to those on the sister company, the DQT, and similar to four other platforms in the marketplace as well. So whilst there's an independent expert reviewing our menu, we don't expect that to cause any issues for our business, any material issues at all. That process is underway. I expect that to be completed in the next few months. and there'll be an ongoing uplift. So I think you won't see any operational or economic impacts of the trustee transition to Hub24. That's our strong belief. We're certainly focused on bringing it in-house and certainly excited about having the trustee board having the proximity to us as a business rather than the trustee board looking after 12 different funds. That's a benefit for members and for shareholders as well. So No impact there. There is a process. The investment menu is being reviewed. It's not stopping us from running our businesses, not stopping us from adding new investment options to the platform. It's just part of the industry having to lift the bar, and we very much welcome that bar being lifted on behalf of members and consumers.

That's great. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Elizabeth Miliardis of Macquarie.

Please go ahead.

Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. The first one's just on the EBITDA margins for the platform business and then the group overall. What's the outlook over the next couple of years? I think consensus has 2% of margin expansion over the next few years for the platform business, so a bit of colour and that would be great. Thank you.

Yeah, I'm happy to take that one.

You can see in the historical performance of the platform business that we have continued to deliver underlying EBITDA margins. The intention, we can clearly see operating leverage in that business, and we know that we can deliver operating leverage in that business going forward. The balance that we've talked about in the past and that we continue to do is the investment level. We can see opportunities for growth and to expand our reach and to expand our target markets. So we are continuing to invest, and Andrew talked about some of the strategies that we've got out there, including MyHub. We're doing lots of things. We've got the TAO offer out there for the Iris retirement solutions, so we do continue to invest in new solutions plus the MyHub strategy. When it comes to the group margins, and you look more at 27, as Andrew sort of mentioned, when we're looking at the FUR and the net flows, the outflows on the IDPS side have been elevated compared to last year. And so that may have an impact on the revenue growth for the year, but we are still going to continue to invest. So you may see flat to slightly growing underlying EBITDA margins. They'll certainly come back on the growth that you've seen in 26 is my expectation.

Okay, thank you. Just that flat to slightly growing is at the group level, just confirming that? You could say that one again. I think you said that you were expecting flat to slightly growing. Is that what you said?

Just clarifying your final comment there about flat to growing EBITDA margins. Is that at the group level or at the platform level? Just to double check. That would be at both the group and the platform level. Okay. And then just the second question for me today is just the fee margin. Obviously, there's a bit of, you know, up and downs on the trading and cash fee income that we've seen flow through that. Is this 31 range, you know, should we assume this is sort of the sort of steady state or perhaps the exit rate as we see it and sort of replace our numbers from here?

So, yeah, the 31 bits for the custody revenue margin, we always say that you can expect to see anywhere around the half a bit to a bit of margin compression as you see people's average balances grow and they move into higher tiers or they hit a cap. That trend, you can expect to see that. So when you roll forward to 27, I still expect there to be anywhere around the half a bit to a bit of margin compression on the custody revenue margin margin.

Okay, got it. Thank you. Thank you. Your next question comes from Nick McGarrigle with Barron Joey. Please go ahead.

Hi, team. Thanks for taking questions. Just one on the first six and a bit weeks of the year. Can you give us the split between market and flows for that $4.6 billion of growth?

Sure. Do you want to turn it?

Yeah, I'm happy to take that one.

Roughly, it would be about $2 billion would relate to net flows for those six weeks up to the 13th of August. And therefore, you've got roughly about $2.5, $2.6 billion of markets in there. So I think everybody knows that the ASX 200 has been sort of circa around that 4%. So we're lower correlated than that. Obviously, we've got a much lower impact on the markets than, say, the ASX 200.

Okay.

Are the gross flows so far consistent or higher than last year? I think what you're seeing is, as we said earlier, there's uncertainty in discretionary funds and money moving around in IDPS, which happens at times like this and it tends to come back at subsequent times.

Just as my follow-up question, if there are higher gross outflows, where do you think that they're going? Are they being parked outside the platform until the tax environment is more certain and people want to have a more clear vision of how they want to deploy that in terms of product, or is it tax structure as well?

I think it's a logical assumption, Nick, although we can't tell because it's not going through a superannuation gateway. You certainly had flows in outflows at the end of quarter four which in some cases was people restructuring for tax or paying tax bills we certainly saw some large withdrawals people who had significant tax bills from really ultra high net wealth customers coming up to you know in May and June you'll Your question is a logical, you know, your question is really the answer. I think there's some uncertainty out there about the future of different structures for different types of people who have those sorts of investment products and typically high net wealth people. I think it is people getting reset at this point in time and either chasing cash flows or thinking about markets and timing. But it's really in that discretionary space, not in the superannuation space.

Great, thanks.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Jeff Kai with Citi. Please go ahead.

Good morning.

Thanks for taking my questions. Just the first one in terms of net flows. To what extent are you seeing signs that the IDPS flows have started to recover in August? And is it possible that flows remain quite depressed until the second half of 2017?

Do we have that analysis?

We haven't seen a significant change in the trend for going into the 13th of August on the IDPS flows. So for that first six weeks, we've sort of seen that elevated outflows on the IDPS side. As Andrew said, we have seen significant resilience on the super side. And so the super side of the business continues to grow. We're seeing, as Andrew said, the growth has continued to come in. But on the IDPS, it's been fairly consistent. Coming out of June, it's been fairly consistent.

Okay, got it. And then the follow-up on the EBITDA margin guidance. So to get to that flat or slightly higher EBITDA margins, are you sort of suggesting a core cost is going to be circa 10% year-on-year for FY27?

It's going to be above the, when you look at total expenses, it will be above that 10%.

It will be sort of in that low to mid-teens range.

Okay. And does that low to mid-teens include the insourcing of the trustee business?

It includes any project and transition expenses. Okay. And as Andrew said, we do have a program of work around the transition and we are working with the existing trustee on uplift and license condition programs. It includes all of those costs. When the change in control takes effect and we take ownership of the trustee, then both the revenues and expenses will go up for that. That's not included, but that will have a net neutral underlying EBITDA impact. And as we get closer to that, we'll give you a pro forma so that you know how to model that.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Simon Fitzgerald with Jefferies.

Please go ahead.

Hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. Andrew, I was hoping to explore a bit more about the industry average for per advisor. Obviously, it's very high at that sort of 83 million level level. Part of that, I imagine, is that some books have been cut or at least some of the legacy books where they've lost a lot of financial advisors, but maybe some of those assets are orphaned. And I guess, you know, obviously, HUB's average full or per advisor has increased nicely. But I wonder if there's an effect in all of that as well, that maybe not a lot of that or not all of that $83 million is actively managed. I guess I'm asking you that in the sense that is that a reasonable goal to be striving for that? Or could you at least hit those sort of numbers eventually over time?

It's a blunt statistic based on the industry who are divided by the advisors. So you're correct, there will be some orphans or unadvised clients in that. But you'll also have some advisors of over $100 million. And so it's just a statistic to show that there's a growth rate if you look at the averages. It's a proxy for us to say, we have statistically a low level of penetration when you think about that moving forward. Advisors will have one or two platforms and our share is far lower than the industry average. The statistics there to illustrate that. When you unpack it, you're right, there'll be some unadvised clients, there'll be advisors with more than $100 million. We've got advisors with more than $100 million on our platform. It's just to demonstrate that there's a runway with our existing client relationships that we hope to increase the share of wallet, and we're seeing that number tick up. And basically it says, hey, we're doing a good job at actually growing the share of wallet at the same time as getting new advisors. It's simply for those illustration purposes.

Yeah, good. Thank you. And then just one really quick question on the tech solutions. Class delivered its largest annual increase, I think, in terms, and now Finuti grew quite nicely as well. there's been some of those sort of metrics that we look at in terms of document handling and things like that. But I don't think that the revenue grew anywhere near as much. So I'm just wondering what the sort of core drivers we should be thinking about the sort of tech solutions business in terms of revenue going forward. You might pick that up.

I don't know if it's the revenue business. It's clearly obvious. When you look at the class document orders, 15% growth companies, 11% growth. Class account, which is a 5% growth, is the largest part of the business. The revenue growth because of CPI price increases and because of volume increases, the SMSS market for the 12 months to March grew slightly over 4% and the class number of accounts was slightly above the market, so slightly above where, so if the market was growing just above the 4% class, it was slightly above that. So it's really around the SMSF volume drivers and then think of it as CPI revenue increases are the biggest factors that are going to hit the revenue in the tech solutions business.

So the revenue's up 9%, but the ESRs are 8%, and that's partly because of the cost of some of the investments and the registry fees, yep.

Yep.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Blake Dowsett with Jotun Group. Please go ahead.

Hi, Kim. Thanks for taking my call. Just very quickly, going back to the number you provided for the first six weeks, just in terms of what you've seen in the past in these situations where there's a bit of outflow in IDPS, Does that tend to, in your experience, does that tend to be fewer lost or is that fewer that you think of as deferred? It comes back onto platform at a later stage. I'm just trying to get a feel for how the cadence of this could drop going forward.

We've seen catch-up periods. We've seen periods where we've raced ahead and our flows have surprised the market. You see that after COVID. You see it after other macro events. If you're like me, you're thinking about where do you invest? Do you invest in growth stocks or income stocks or the tax settings? Do you reset your portfolio? And so generally it comes in cycles. You know, we see fits and spurts. So we see a slowdown. We certainly see the level of outflows tail off as we've seen that in the past as economic conditions have stabilised and we've seen catch-up periods as well. So... That's the best answer I can give you.

A little bit of everything. Well, I appreciate... Look, it's hard to know. No, no, no.

We've got an interest time ahead for the next 12 to 24 months as the budget settings roll through.

Well, looking at your FY28 FUA guidance, I guess is probably the biggest confidence point from all of that that would indicate that you think this is relatively transitory. Maybe if you can talk through... some of the build-ups that go into the bottom end, just as the top end of that guidance, and whether you are forecasting any of this difficult period to play into that sort of number.

Sure. Before we do, the other comment I've got is that superannuation will become more attractive, and we get to see that come through. If you look at the policy settings in that superannuation has concessional tax treatment, I would expect that over time, more people will top up their super more than before, and that's a very large part of our business. And so it might compensate or offset any other downturn you have on the other side of it. It's uncharted. But certainly superannuation is a growing pool of money. It's a growing market. And I expect that to actually benefit from budget settings. And you may see that come through differently. But Kit, did you want to unpack the flow?

Yeah. So I think in the guidance that we've given out to 2028, there is obviously a varied range of net flows plus markets that you can get to. to still stay within the range. And so just from a base case perspective, you could be anywhere around that sort of $18, $19 billion plus a 5% to 6% market, and you're still sort of landing somewhere around that middle-ish of the range. But then it's unlikely, you know, based on history that we've seen, it's unlikely that when you get this slower period because of macro environment. It's unlikely that it continues for two years onward. So you would expect by the time you get to 2028, this macro environment that we're in sort of just settled down a bit.

The flex between the bottom end and the top end, is that coming through your assumptions on flow or is it more your assumptions on market return?

The combination of both. Okay.

Appreciate your time. Thanks, Steve.

Thank you.

Your next question comes from Andre Stadnik with RBC. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Can I ask my first question just around your positioning across the different customer segments? You know, you're currently all the way from Mass Supplement up to what's 100 Worth, potentially Ultra 100 Worth. Are you happy with your positioning and your products, or are there any areas you'd like to see more of or better integrated?

I think we're very happy with our positioning. If you look at the research from investment trends, they actually have us as leading in each of those segments as a platform offer. So we're very happy with the positioning. We see all parts of our business growing and we think that's part of our strategy is to think through the lens of the customer or the advisor as opposed to a particular market or product. It's to have multiple solutions with different legal structures, super, non-super, MDA, MAS schemes to cater for those. So we're very happy with the positioning. We continue to work in all of those and we're active in all of them. So, you know, I think in general the problem to solve for Australia and the challenge that we're looking into and certainly investing in is making advice more efficient regardless of which segment you're in. And so making delivery and implementation advice on the platform and the steps before it as efficient as possible plays to all those segments. That's our focus as opposed to are positioning a product differently in the segments. How do we get more throughput? How do we make it easier for customers to get the help they need and help advisors do that? That's the lens through which we look at the business. So we've got advisors operating in all those segments and across those segments. And so our focus is on that efficiency piece for them and the choice and flexibility.

Thanks so much, Andrew. And for my second question, can I ask around platform revenue margins, particularly around the trading side? Is there anything you can do in terms of product features to encourage more trade and more activity among clients?

Look, I don't think we're thinking about how do we get more trading revenue in terms of encouraging people to trade. We're encouraging people to save long-term and have good advice. So it depends on the advice and what's going on in the markets. We're not necessarily a trading platform. We're a long-term investing platform. and so we certainly, though, see those things happen. So you see more cash statistically in the first half as dividends come in and income come in, then you see more trading as that gets settled in the market. You see that over a 12-month period. Certainly we think about different products and different revenue opportunities for the business but not actually actively encouraging trading as such. That's driven by markets and driven by client needs and we think that should be done robustly and safely.

Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Olivia Coulombe with E&P. Please go ahead.

Hi, Andrea. Just on the Molino commentary tomorrow, what sort of industry input has there been into that from the platform side of the industry to try to counter some of the problems I guess rhetoric from the superannuation funds that are trying to protect their back books, for want of a better word?

There's been a huge amount of effort and conversations occurring from all parts of the industry. You're seeing some being more vocal in the media, but certainly there's been a lot of work done through the Financial Services Council collectively on behalf of platforms and investment managers and advice businesses, as there has been from individual businesses like ourselves. There's been a lot going on. We've had private meetings with the Minister. We've had collective meetings with Treasury and regulators. There's been a lot of activity there. I think that we'll wait and see what comes out tomorrow, but there does need to be real clear advocacy for choice and engagement in our industry. After all, it's our citizens' money, and you've got... some actions. I don't need to comment on the politics. We've got some actions where you've seen lots and lots of people moving towards platforms and advice because they need help. So our goal is to provide that help, and the government very much recognises that help's required. I think you'll see some sensible outcomes tomorrow, but can't pre-empt that. But there's been a lot of work out of here.

Yeah, I appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Jack Lynch with Taylor Collison. Please go ahead.

Thanks for answering my questions.

First one is just on the super component of the flows. Clearly, it's been strong over the last 12 months, sounds like in the trading update as well, and the funding pools, they've accelerated a lot. I'm just trying to get a sense of your guidance there. Have you assumed IDPS flows are just cyclical and they recover, or do you assume an acceleration in super flows coming out of some of the stronger performance that you've seen over the last 12 months?

I think with the range that we've got for those net flows, any of those outcomes could fit within that range. We generally, when we look at forecasting out for the FUA guidance, we take the market conditions that we can see and the momentum and the pipeline within the business that we can see, and then we assume normal markets. But we haven't, even if you take the first six weeks of August and also, you know, you could see it when you were coming out of Q4, the last quarter of full year 26 and then the first six weeks, we've kind of seen that uplift in outflows on the IDPS side. Even with that rate continuing, you would still get within the range that we've put in there. But then again, if there was a shift in acceleration and superannuation, that may well get you to the top end if that continued with everything else. The range would cater for every scenario.

In terms of our approach, we look at a model and we think about where we'll sit and we try and build a range around it with multiple sensitivities. We don't want to be changing guidance. Last August, we had a $14 billion range as well. And in February following that, we shrunk that down to a $10 billion range and we added $10 billion to it. And so it's not as if we think about individual factors. We think about where we think we're heading. And then we go, okay, what's the margin on top of that? What's the margin below that? Whether it be market sensitivities or flow sensitivities, it's a model and we don't want to be updating guidance. So Our approach isn't as sophisticated to think about what will we get for IDPS and super. We think about a range of activities and try and give some guidance where we've got a range on either side.

Yeah, thanks for that. And you mentioned tomorrow some potential outcomes coming out of that. what's going on in Canberra, just try to get your sense around what gives you confidence in a more competitive neutral outcome in terms of switching, but only on costs. And then on the cost side as well, just keen to see how positioned Hub is if there is an increase in codified due diligence and higher compliance costs coming through the platforms.

I think if you look at the demand and you look at the DBFI reforms and the fact that you've got industry funds saying they want to be able to deliver advice, then advice is not available as openly as it needs to be. Any sand in the gears or shift that detracts from that is actually potentially going to have negative impacts on consumers and members and certainly not have Australia capitalise on the huge investment it's got having the envy of the world in our superannuation system. So I think it just defies logic to actually put constraints around delivery advice. And I think the issues that we're dealing with are not based on advice issues as such as multiple phases across an ecosystem, MIS schemes, auditors and so forth. So I know from discussions with our colleagues and with regulators and with others and even with some others on the industry fund side saying that they themselves don't want to put sand in the gears in terms of provisional advice and access to advice. I think that would be negative for Australia and negative for Australians and I don't think we'll see those sort of policies come out You might see some uplift of the bar and codification of what's expected for people to deliver. I would see that as I'd welcome that. I don't think it's going to add significant cost. I don't know what the announcements are, but I'm certainly comfortable that we need to play our role and that the industry needs to adapt. It will continue to as it always has. So I'm not expecting negativity from that. But again, I don't know what's being announced. But from our discussions, I'm fairly confident that there'll be sensible outcomes.

Thanks, Andrew.

Thank you. Your next question comes from Anthony Hu with Ord Minute. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Just the first one, just on MyHub. You're saying that you're rolling it out in this half. Can you talk a bit about any sort of revenue upside? What's the model there? What are your expectations?

Some of the stuff we're rolling out, and it will depend on the client group, and we're still working through the commercialization model for different client segments. For example, the advice review tool will be a product that we receive fees for, and it's a software service. And so from that perspective, there will be some increments in revenue, but not sufficient to turn the dial, I would have thought, in the short term. It is an incremental rollout. Some of the things are features that you would expect a platform to have, like an AR product around it. And so I think you should just model out our financial set, the right answer kit, in terms of follow the trend already.

Yeah, and we haven't baked in any particular upside in 2027 yet. from increased commercial revenue from executing on the strategy. We're focused on executing the strategy and working with clients to make sure that we get that right.

I think the strategy is aimed at increasing flows and creating advocacy and winning more of our share in the future as well as some additional revenue.

That's great. Thank you. And then the second one, Just in relation, just following up, there's been a lot of discussion already around your FUA target for FY28 and talking about your assumptions around flows. But in the context of, you know, you're still adding or growing your advisor network very quickly. If I look at slide 10, you've got the chart showing, you know, the yellow bits in particular, 14% come from new advisors. In that sort of context, why wouldn't we be more optimistic around inflows growing? Because as those advisors continue to mature, you would expect that to bring in even more inflows, right? And you're still growing currently as well. So I'm just wondering, how do you think about that as you continue to add more advisors, but yet the inflows are kind of You're talking about $18 to $19 billion, which is still sort of flat versus last year.

Thank you. We actually do see inflows growing at the gross level. So if you unpack the net flow number, as our base or our fuller balance grows each year, there's about 12% of outflows in pension payments and withdrawals. So actually, to hit those net flow numbers, you need to increase your gross loss by $4 or $5 billion a year to hit the same numbers. So whilst the net flow is might appear to be flat, the gross flows actually have to increase to levels that others have not done. In fact, our gross flows are at industry record levels currently. And so it's uncharted territory. So assumed in that is gross flow increases. So we certainly hope to outperform that. We don't like to give guidance or outlook statements that we have to revise downwards. We're certainly happy to revise them upwards if we think so in the future, as we've done in the past. So we take a fairly judicious approach to it, but there is assumed increases in gross inflows. And part of our job is to pay pension payments and allow people to withdraw. So that's the answer there in terms of when you unpack it. It's the 12% outflows of your base. So every year you have more outflows and it's a consistent one. And they are industry-leading outflow numbers, i.e. they're very low outflow numbers compared to PSE. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, that's great.

Thank you. That's great.

So you're getting a growing filler base and growing margin or growing the earnings on that larger filler base, but your flow level is a story of in and out.

Thank you. Your next question comes from James Bales with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to circle back to advisor behaviour post-budget. As a result of that, is there any change in your go-to-market, your product priorities or advisor education? Is there opportunities in terms of market share or deepening relationships and finding solutions for these customers? I'm sorry, I missed the start of the question. just post-budget and the changes that have seen people waiting on legislation.

Yep. Look, as I said earlier, I think there's certainly a trend or a drive towards superannuation. We are the leading platform for superannuation inflows in Australia. In fact, we have the highest level of switching inflows across any super fund, including industry funds. that is with consumers who are choosing or members who are choosing to move their superannuation so certainly we are focused on strengthening that proposition the efficiency the outcomes hence we're bringing the trustee inside we see it as a core part of our business so yes in simple terms our focus on super will continue and we continue to be there already I think that's the best opportunity from that perspective in terms of others look we will focus on other segments we are waiting to see some more details on how the tax legislation goes. But there are other product opportunities, for example, insurance or investment bonds. Will they be more attractive moving ahead? And we're certainly actively working towards launching products in that vein where you can have a 10-year concessional tax treatment which will be a better outcome than sitting in the current structures that are there. So there are opportunities to do that. We're active in that space as well as active in the superannuation space and we will work with our customer bases to look for solutions that maximise opportunities coming out of this.

And then maybe one quick follow-up. Just on the tax rate and the decline in 26, what should we expect looking forward into 27?

So the expectation is that the tax rate will tick up again. The reason why it's low at the moment is just the timing, largely because of the purchasing of what we call treasury shares to service the employee share scheme. We had a large performance rights issue that was issued back in 2020 that vested last year. And so that really drove quite a large movement in the treasury shares. And so when you move into 2027, you should expect the tax to come back into something with a 20 in front of it. So it should be in the sort of slow, possibly mid-20s for the tax rate.

Perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Your next question comes from James Pizzanella with Unified Capital Partners.

Please go ahead.

Hi, Andrew. Katrina, appreciate the time. Just getting back in the weeds, just keen to understand maybe the comment on the expense growth in the low to mid-teens range, sort of just noting employee expenses were only up kind of a million and a half in the second half. So I guess just trying to understand with some of that hiring more back-weighted on the employee numbers and, you know, admin expenses did take a bit higher as well, so a few moving parts. So just keen to understand a bit more detail there. Thank you.

Yeah, so when you go forward to 2027, we gave guidance for the expense growth of 18 to 20, and we obviously landed right in the middle for full year 26. When we roll forward to 2027, we're not giving necessarily a physical guidance like we did because it will come back to normal levels, which is that low to mid-teens. The drivers of that is always to do with employee headcount increases. Employee headcount increase will slow in 2027 compared to the 26th rate. And so you'll probably see anywhere up to sort of around that 100 employee growth, you know, in line with the growth in the volumes that we've seen come through on both sides of armature businesses, being the platform and the class and now affinity sides. There's also CPI increases on our supplier costs. And there's also increased, you know, if you mentioned in that administration place line, you could see some upticks there. And that includes our external technology providers. And the same with every company. We have a real strong handle on our cloud costs and where they're going. But you can see some of that coming through in 26 and into 27. So they're the main drivers of the cost there.

Excellent. That makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you. There are no further questions at this time.

I'll now hand back to Mr. Alcock for closing remarks.

Thank you very much for coming along for your questions. In summary, I just wanted to say, look, I think we are very, very well positioned. And whilst there's uncertainty, people are asking questions about current IDPS and markets and so forth, we're hiring people, we're investing, we see the thematic structural changes as beneficial for our customers and shareholders, and we're absolutely committed to continuing to do that as well and leveraging our market-leading position and our execution of the strategy to continue to grow into the future and beyond. So we think we're very excited about what's ahead. A bumpy road maybe for some, but certainly we're focused on our strategy as always and looking forward to delighting you with our next results as well.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.