MA Financial Group Limited

Good morning and welcome to the first half FY25 result for MA Financial Group. My name is Julian Biggins and I am the joint CEO of MA Financial alongside Chris Wyke who is in the room with me. We also have Giles Boddy, Chief Financial Officer and Michael Leonard, the Head of Investor Relations with us. We're once again very pleased to report a strong group result underpinned by contributions from all of our businesses with momentum continuing into the second half. I'll start the presentation on slide five and spend a moment on our philosophy before we run through the first half performance. In June, we celebrated our 16th anniversary with the business being founded in 2009. As a reminder, MA Financial was founded as a corporate advisory business, along with the key approach being clients first and providing a positive environment for our staff. This approach stands true today, despite our business now covering a number of different business divisions and countries. Over the years, we've built numerous businesses from scratch, including the Asset Management Division, which initially focused on the innovative immigration-related products and later successfully expanded to include hospitality, private credit and real estate, and investing on behalf of a very broad range of investors. More recently, we've expanded into the residential market through FinShore and the MA Money business we've both attached to the large Australian residential market. Businesses are not built in a linear way and strategies need to be proactively managed and refined over time. Building is often commenced with periods of investment and therefore short-term headwinds although ultimately we want to see the growth come through. In managing MA Financial we have a portfolio approach to trying to make sure we have a diversified collection of businesses where some are more mature and offer predictable growth and others are freshly planted seeds that offer growth opportunities in the future. We're also very focused on building an ecosystem where the various parts of the business work together to succeed and that includes both people and capital. Results are key and we believe the approaches worked well with the group having grown substantially over the last 16 years while the future provides even bigger opportunities. Now turning forward to slide seven and some of the key themes from the result. Underlying earnings up 26% on the prior comparable period with growth across all key operating statistics. Record gross flows into the asset management business with a broadening of the distribution channels to include the listed market equity with the IPO of MA1. We believe this channel can be a very strong contributor to growth as investors seek liquid alternatives to the hybrid market. The acquisition of IP Generation introduced a differentiated direct high net worth distribution channel to our real estate raising capabilities. And the group started deploying capital with Warburg Pincus, our institutional partner in real estate credit. These are all significant strategic milestones for MA Financial and demonstrate our ability to identify market changes and adjust our strategy proactively for market conditions. This has been a consistent focus for us since we founded the business. The residential mortgage marketplace continues to grow strongly with both MA Money and FinShore experiencing strong growth over the first half, with a unique ecosystem touching one in nine home loans in the country and MA Money adding almost $2 billion of loans over the last 12 months. The corporate advisory business had an impressive first half with strong transaction flows and revenue growth as market performance was strong over the half, although volatile. Finally, we retain a strong focus on active management of the balance sheet to optimise capital and earnings. This covers both our asset management and lending initiatives that require significant capital from time to time, although they can also be the source of capital through recycling opportunities. The strength of the business is in its whole and the demonstration of this couldn't be stronger than in relation to MA Money, Finsure and Asset Management collaborating across the residential marketplace to innovate and deliver strong growth in a sustainable and capital light manner. As you can see on slide 8, the operating financial results across the business were very strong and this reflects the proactive strategy and investment we made in the past delivering growth. Recurring revenue was up 26% to $120 million, a record for the group. Earnings per share is $0.14 for the half, up 26% on the prior comparable period. Assets under management up 31% to $12.7 billion half on half and gross flows were $1.5 billion versus $1.1 billion in the prior comparable period. Another record. In the lending and technology division, Finshaw continued to grow strongly with the loans managed by the group up 28% and MA Money's loan book growth accelerated materially to finish the period at $3.3 billion, up 134% on the prior year half. As I previously mentioned, corporate advisory had an excellent start with revenue up 19% to $26 million. All in all, a really strong result right across the group, and pleasingly, momentum has continued into the second half as well. Turning forward to slide nine, a new slide for us focused on recurring revenue. Recurring revenue is a key focus as it talks to the sustainability of the top line. In the first half 25, recurring revenue increased to 74% compared to 68% in FY24 and was underpinned by strong growth in lending and technology and demand for private credit products. We really like the stable revenue base of the group and believe that our absolute recurring revenue base will continue to increase over the medium term. Clearly, some of our more cyclical revenue streams associated with transactional activity, such as performance fees and corporate advisory revenue, will fare better in a more buoyant market, and we believe that with interest rates rolling over, we're seeing some green shoots in both businesses. Turning forward to slide 10 and our FY26 growth targets, which are getting much closer. As you can see on this slide, we have made significant progress across nearly all five key growth targets in the period. Assets under management at $12.7 billion is within striking distance of the $15 billion target, although we acknowledge that we acquired IP generation through the period. MA Money's loan book at $3.3 billion is already approaching the $4 billion target with 18 months to run. We do caution investors to not extrapolate directly into profit as the residential loan market is dynamic and will go through periods of investment to manage increased volumes. Whilst we are confident, our impact guidance remains unchanged for this business. Finshaw at $155 billion shows the implied target growth to be well below historical numbers, and we're confident of hitting this target next year. Corporate advisory is more a point-in-time measure, and we feel really good about the talent in the business, industry coverage, and diversity in pipeline. And finally, we do see the group EBITDA margin improving over the next 18 months as our focus on operating efficiencies start to provide some benefits. alongside MA money scaling and market conditions improving for more cyclical fee streams, including performance fees. We're really pleased with how the business has performed over the last couple of years when we first published these targets and remain focused on delivering and exceeding expectations. Now turning forward to slide 11 and the financial results. Revenue was up 21% to a record $163 million in the half. Asset management revenue was up 10% driven by ongoing growth in demand for private credit funds. Loan book growth in MA money contributed to revenue growth alongside corporate advisory delivering a stronger start to the year when compared to last. The revenue results are strong across the entire business. On the expense side, the 20% increase was primarily there to support the growth in MA money and included the investment in diversifying our distribution channels primarily into the US and Singapore. Statutory profit was impacted by establishment costs to launch MA1 and the acquisition of IP generation. Both costs have been removed from our underlying result to provide investors with a normalised result. Strategic investment spend impacted underlying earnings by $6.1 million. which is in line with our previous guidance and expectations. On slide 12 you can see the momentum remains with our key financial drivers across the business and we see this continuing into the second half. Now turning forward to slide 13 and divisional highlights. Asset management again reported record gross inflows being driven by strong demand for private credit and we've also seen a return in interest for real estate over the last 12 months with Red Cape and the marinas being particularly active. Net inflows increased 2% to nearly $700 million compared to the prior period and was impacted by global volatility and some increased liquidity sought in our open-ended strategies. Importantly, post-result, we have seen gross flows remain strong and net flows stabilise at around $100 million per month. Recurring revenue margin at 155 points was up 5 points on the first half last year and remains supported by private credit funds and is in line with our guidance. In lending and technology, Finshaw continues to grow strongly, driven by new brokers joining the platform, with the broken numbers now exceeding 4,000, up 17% on the prior. Again, MA Money added about $2 billion to its loan book over the last 12 months and continues to grow strongly. The NIM, net interest margin of 1.5%, was up from 1.1% in the prior, which is a strong result for the group. And finally, corporate advisories saw a strong contribution, advising over $1.6 billion of transactions in the first half alone. We see all three divisions working well and contributing collaboratively to deliver strong results across the diversified group. Turning forward to slide 15 and post-result activity. The strong momentum in the group has continued post-30 June with positive gross inflows in the first seven weeks of almost $380 million and $182 million net, excluding institutions. Whilst early days, this returns the net flows run rate to around 100 million a month, which is a strong result given the market environment. We've seen the real estate business become more active as the IP generation team and our core real estate team collaborate on a number of transactions And including our alternative real estate business, we have over $1 billion of potential acquisitions under due diligence. Red Cape Hospitality continues to go from strength to strength as the fund has stabilised post the period of uncertainty attached to both COVID and a material increase in interest rates. Red Cape has recommenced its growth journey with acquiring over 180 million of hotels over the year to date. We've recently commenced a $50 to $70 million capital raising to fund further growth and the underlying performance of the assets has been stellar. with the forecast FY26 distribution increased 17% to 11.25 cents per unit. Moving to lending and technology and MA Money's volume growth have continued to accelerate with almost 570 million of new loans in the last seven weeks and the loan book now reaching 3.7 billion. This is a fantastic result and again demonstrates our ability to strategically build valuable businesses over time. Turning to slide 16 in our outlook, We expect the continuation of the momentum and look forward to delivering a strong second half result. In asset management, we expect to deliver growth in both gross and net inflows. We expect IP generation to settle in the first week of September and are excited about the number of opportunities that the business is working on that will see our core real estate asset management business return to growth. We think it is a great time to be active in the real estate sector. Recurring revenue margin for the year is expected to be higher than FY24 at 160 points, although it will step down slightly post the settlement of IP generation. Performance and transaction fees are anticipated to increase in the second half relative to the first half, although they remain subdued compared to our stronger years. In lending and technology, we expect MA money to continue to deliver growth. However, the stronger than anticipated volume growth today will accelerate a requirement for some OPEX and technology spend in the second half of 2025. Importantly, the performance of MA money today increases our confidence in delivering on the FY26 target of 15 to 20 mil NPAT. We continue to remain focused on retaining a capital light balance sheet and using our various sources of capital, including asset management funds, to grow our lending business. In corporate advisory, we expect conditions to remain supportive of deal flow and accordingly are retaining revenue per executive to be within the 1.1 to 1.3 million range. In regards to strategic spend, our guidance remains unchanged at approximately $10 million in FY25, slightly down on the prior period. The investment spend largely relates to the US private credit platform and there's a slight skew to the first half as we see the US platform grow. We'll pause the presentation there today and leave the divisional detail for you to digest and obviously feel free to ask questions. As you know, our focus is on creating long-term value and building sustainable diversified business. We believe that we are executing on a strategy to deliver this outcome and thank you for taking an interest in MA Financial. With that, I'll end the call and pass back to the moderator to take questions.

Thank you. If you wish to ask your question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. The first question today comes from Gayachandra with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hi, team. Thanks for taking my question. I just have a couple, if that's all right. So the first one is, are your expectations around a 40-60 underlying profit skew for the first half and second half still unchanged?

Yeah, broadly consistent. Yeah, that's where we're sort of expecting it to land this year, a high level, 40-60 split.

Okay, perfect. The second one is, just looking towards the next 12 months around compositional fund flows, Do you expect credit fund flows to remain at similar levels as recently, or can we layer stronger real estate inflows on top of that? Or do you think credit moderates and real estate accelerates?

I think this is Julian speaking, but I think as a general rule at the minute, we're seeing the monthly flows are largely going into private credit. Forecasting 12 months in this market is difficult. albeit we don't see any reason for, I guess, the income attraction of the private credit funds to stay as it is. You'll see things that we do in a bespoke way around a single asset or an opportunity, I think probably be additive to these flows, but it must be a long time.

Yeah, it's precious. So the only other thing I would add as well is there is a difference between the listed market and the unlisted market as well in that calculus. Obviously, the listed market for private credit was opened up for us in March this year, and so that I think you think of it a little bit differently in terms of that investor base to those monthly flows. I don't necessarily know if one takes away from another. There may be that portfolio theory approach, That's not something that we have seen to date.

I think the point we've made, I think having more channels to access the distribution is key to the business. We've opened up a number of those channels through this half year that give us broader access to equity.

Okay, perfect. And just the last one from me. MA Money has had an extremely strong growth rate and the improving NIM is really positive. Can you please quantify the kind of increased operational investments you'll be required to undertake into H25?

In dollar terms, are we disclosing that granularity to the market? No, that's right. I think we expect the EBITDA that we printed in the first half to be slightly better in the second half. I think we did benefit from tailwinds on the NIM, so you can set sort of the 1.5 in the NIM. At the beginning of the year, we were sort of expecting 1.4, but with those The market expecting those cash rate changes, we actually kind of had some favourability on the BVSW spread that was coming through. So I think for the full year, we're sort of still expecting them to be around about the 1.4. So maybe some of those tailwinds sort of backing off in the second half of the year as well. But again, we'd see, you know, revenue sort of increasing in the second half and expenses growing similar to the first half.

Okay, perfect. Thank you for taking my questions.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Lafatani Sotirio with UMST. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys, and congratulations on a good result. First off, can we get an understanding on expectations going forward around guidance setting? You know, the FY26 guidance when you first set it a little while ago was far off into the horizon. When we roll forward six months it's almost going to be annual guidance and will you look to set again three-year, four-year guidance and some of them MA money targets, it would be surprising if you don't hit it within six months. So how should we think about the overall guidance setting going forward?

I think we're sort of 18 months a bit less out from that December 26 target. Yeah, we're very focused on either delivering or exceeding those numbers. And as you've called out in some places, it's pretty obvious that we'll exceed. We don't plan on resetting those targets within the next 18 months. We just want to exceed, right? That's the basic principle. In terms of what we'll do, getting through the three-year sort of strategy is still up for debate internally, so I can't really give you direction on that.

Clearly, we look through the lens of a medium-term or longer-term view for how do you build the business. So we're conscious of that with the market. But I couldn't commit today to whether we go one way or the other in terms of refreshing that. It's a real strong focus on just delivering at the minute.

Yeah, no, I understand. Got it. And just with MA Money, you flagged the additional spend. And just to follow up on the previous question, could you talk to more of the specifics required for that extra scale? Is it extra features? Is it focused more on cloud? What's the actual spend going to go on?

It comes into three buckets. Bucket number one is we are increasing our funding capacity to cater for the increased volume. And when you increase your funding capacity, that comes with associated fine fees and expenses. And that funding capacity is a quality problem because it's needed, but that then needs to be recalibrated into an efficient ramp and utilization profile to cater to that. The second bucket is in people and those people fall into two categories. Those that are out there and taking the MA money product to the broker network and really helping deliver that growth and we are not at a saturation point in the market and so whilst that growth trajectory is there, we'll continue to hire and lean into that. And so there will be some expense, but those folks take a bit of time to spin up and hit a run rate. And the other headcount that we need is in the credit assessment and servicing with an increase in books and increasing volumes. You know, you do need to hire people on that front, but that ties in neatly with the third bucket, which is the technology spend whereby you actually want to make your in situ resource and human capital as efficient as possible when it comes to underwriting and processing. And so we're really focused on being very tech forward to increase the productivity of that operational platform in order for same to marginally more headcount be capable of processing this increased volume. And so there is a more one-off tech spend that gets put into the business associated with that. Our objective is to be lighter on the human capital spend and a bit heavier on the one-off tech spend in order to make that resource way more productive. It's something that we were thinking about on the growth profile, and as that growth Clearly, I mean, you can see it, right? It's faster than we had anticipated when we put out the targets. So it's an expense that we're going to put into the business in the second half in order to put that additional tech infrastructure around that headcount to leverage it more. Candidly, it's been pulled forward a little bit. We knew we were going to spend that money, but with the volume hitting us now, we're spending it ahead of time.

Got it, that makes sense. Just a little follow-up on that, and then my final question. So does that tech spin also include integrating any AI to help with that credit assessment process? And just finally, if you could add some colour around the US private credit platform, can you just refresh us where things are at from rolling it out, products set, and momentum? Thanks.

Yeah, so the first question with respect to tech spend and AI, yes. And that's very powerful because the dashboarding and automation and checking that you have for a credit officer, it can save them a lot of time and increase their productivity. So absolutely, that's at the backbone of efficiency and unit economics. So that is included in the spend. With respect to the US platform, There are two initiatives that we have in the U.S. right now. One is the U.S.-based asset private credit fund, which is an interval fund, which we received our SEC registry license to market and distribute in December last year. The major focus in relation to that initiative has been in the capital raising and distribution. That fund, I think, you're going to have to be, that might be 10%, about $120 to $130 million. And that is at US. And that is focused, the main efforts of the platform are focused on getting the flows in through the US RIA network and staff product. That is a lot of shoe leather. One of the key gating items there is getting on the right platforms where that product gets on the shelf, and we're just chipping away with the marketing and getting on the platform. The other initiative in the U.S. is the co-lending partnership with SMBC and Monroe, where we are deploying and ramping up into that partnership. I think it's probably anywhere between $700 million that has been put to work so far in that partnership at this stage. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press the door and one to join the question queue. The next question comes from Glenn Wellham with Trim Capital. Please go ahead.

Yeah, well done on the result, guys. Just a quick question on corporate advisory. Nice little bump in fees in the first half and you've put a little bit more headcount on, although obviously equities remains challenging. How are you seeing advisory going forward? Are you going to add more headcount and what's the conditions like there?

So, yeah, we added some headcount. The recent headcount has been... in the natural resources space and the energy infrastructure space. And we try and look at very closely what models and companies are doing globally and where they're leaning into. So we choreograph and work in sync with them on those efforts because not only the domestic activity, but the global reach is super important. Absolutely, yes, we are looking at continually expanding but the platform and the footprint, it has been a successful start with the addition of those two new teams to the business in the first half of the year. And we are continuing to look to grow that.

Great. And just on private credit, in general, some operators are saying, level of impaired assets. I'm just wondering how you're seeing credit conditions and whether there's been any uptick in your impaired assets.

We believe in a heavy degree of transparency with our investor base around assets on our watch list. We publish and communicate those watch lists to the investor base. I think there's two elements to where do we see the landscape for credit at the moment. the bigger, chunkier asset exposures, and in particular around the real estate credit piece, and then the asset back to the law of large numbers, the large portfolios, and how are they performing, and the MA money included in that. In the real estate credit, we've been pretty stable. We have had a pretty disciplined risk-tolerant setting. And you've also got to look at what Assets and structures are different managers choosing to pursue and invest in. In our real estate credit, we are first ranking, sole security. That's very important. In the asset back from the larger portfolio, we were watching credit quality quite carefully coming into the end of the half. I think in April, May, June, we saw a little tick up in arrears. People were a little bit behind with their payment profiles. And as we've tipped over June and come into the new year, we have seen those arrears come back in, which is a nice trend to come back in and sit down. So we're watching that a little bit carefully, and that's now come back in. So overall, from a broader perspective, where we have chosen to invest and where we've picked our conservative pockets, we are not seeing a walk up in any stress or watch list assets at this stage. And we are very transparent with the investor base around what we do have on our watch list. And conditions are pretty robust at the moment with the unblown credit. Maybe adding to that, in the MA money book as well, we last year had, well provisioning our credit loss provision would be about nine basis points we had last year. So we've lifted that cautiously this year. So it's probably running at about 11 basis points. reserving as the books grow for this year 11 basis points.

Great. Thanks for that. No further questions from me.

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star then 1 to join the question queue. The next question comes from Tim Piper with UBS. Please go ahead.

Hey, morning team. Sorry if these have been asked, but just two quick ones. I think maybe later, you know, calendar year 25, you might have been in a bit of a better position to give us some guidance around the US trajectory towards sort of a break-even type level. Any update there in terms of what you're seeing in terms of book growth and any sort of estimates around when you can kind of recover costs over there?

Yeah. I want things to go faster, which is only natural. You always underestimate You overestimate what you can achieve in the funds on the shelf for the first year and you underestimate the subsequent years. We, I expect, will be giving a lot more colour on that on the full year check-in in February. The money is trickling in and it is walking up. I'd like it to be going quicker, but it's not. We are seeing that momentum increase, though, in terms of the capital. And so in my, I've got a marker really then to update in February.

In any business with bills, there's been points in time where you look at different opportunities in different ways. So where it started and where it ended.

Yeah, I mean, I look at, the other day, honey, I mean, I remember we came out and said, you know, we want to be profitable run rate rates even by Q1 in 2024. we pushed that out the second half of 2024. And in fact, I think we may have made a very small profit in the second half. So the conviction I have in the opportunity remains. You just feel your way in terms of growth and the ramp. But I think there'll be a positive turnaround within the 26th year. And the guidance on that, the target, I'll give more granularity to when we catch up in February.

Yeah, I understand. No problem. Just a second one around Red Cape. Impressive turnaround there. Trading performance strong. You've started transacting on assets again. Maybe just a flavour in terms of what you're seeing out there in the market in terms of further acquisitions. within that portfolio? And then secondly, obviously, earnings on a like-for-like growth basis are strong. Any sort of high-level estimates around reaching the high watermark around the NAV there again within the portfolio?

I'll take the first bit first. The market conditions are pretty conducive for, obviously, asset performance, but also, I guess, buyer demand for assets. assets within the portfolio or competition for assets.

I've said over the last couple of years that the publicans, the big families that own these assets generate a lot of cash flow and they're acquiring more pubs as we go. In saying that, it's a very fragmented market, so you can find opportunities within opportunities. We represent less than 2% or 3% of the market, so I think the ability to grow that portfolio and grow it sensibly is very deep.

And the like-for-like growth, I think it's 13%. EBITDA growth like the likes, obviously very strong, coming off an asset base that's sort of valued on an 8% cap rate. So we feel like the dynamic for red capes to grow is strong, and obviously we've got a proven track record of managing that through a pretty tricky period. In terms of performance fees and high watermarks, I wouldn't expect anything in the sort of next 12 months, maybe getting to the tail end of next year and sort of the start of 2027, sort of when we start thinking about potentially that asset contributing again from that performance feed line. But clearly the business is performing well. We're taking full rack sort of fee cards off it again now, and investors had a very good journey in terms of getting a net 12% return over an eight-year period. So it's going very strong, and performance is very hard to forecast, but that sort of timeframe is probably in our mind.

That's important, because we had a fee waiver in place, and that's come off in the second half of this year. So from July, that fee waiver had stopped.

And you've essentially, with the forecast in the market today at 11 and a quarter cents, I think dividends are up sort of like 15 to 20% year on year on year.

So the growth in the underlying is very strong.

Got it. Sorry, I might just squeeze in one last one. Just in the more core real estate side of the business, obviously you've made the IP generation acquisition. Just comments around what's sort of in the pipeline there in terms of assets you see out there you'd like to transact on and then maybe how much IPG has increased your capital raise abilities within that business that can fund those assets you can see out there?

Yeah. So one of the things I would have said when we bought IP Generation was that it had a very differentiated sort of distribution channel to us, and that was in the direct high net worth channel. And there wasn't a lot of overlap in the private world groups that we have relationships with, so it was really quite incremental to our capital raising capabilities. and very focused around core real estate. So Chris Locke and his team probably raised about $400 million last year in equity to fund a variety of acquisitions. And we see that as the thematics around real estate, in our view, are very strong. And we really like stuff that we're doing in the alternative space. And also in the core space, we're looking at a lot of retail assets, but we've also started drifting around a few commercial assets. But we think it's a little bit early, but the time's getting closer. It's been in the press that we're been put into exclusivity on top right in the Lower North Shore of Sydney. So that's a regional asset sitting in a very metro location that we're in progress discussions around. And there's a number of other assets that fall in the pipe. So these things are not guaranteed to happen.

But I think also with the bench that we've got across the team, including Chris and Greg Miles and their existing core real estate team, that we really have got a fully integrated core real estate asset manager that is very attractive to institutional capital as well. at the right point in the cycle. And that was a lot of the sort of thesis around why we did what we did. And we're seeing it pay dividends very early. But I think, again, like the US credit business, I'd like to sit here and sort of say February next year and we've got some runs on the board and be more definitive about the acquisitions and what was achieved.

Great stuff. Thanks for taking the questions.

Thanks, Tim.

There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand the call back to Mr. Biggins for closing remarks.

Thank you, Betsy, and thank you, everyone, for your time. I know it's a busy day, so we really do appreciate you joining the call and look forward to chatting again soon.