OFX Group Limited

Thank you, Ashley, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call. As Ashley mentioned, I'm joined by Selina Virth, our CFO, James Gref, who is Acting CFO in Q2, and Matt Gregorowski, who leads our Investor Relations Program with Adalia & Co. Selina and I will take you through the pages, and then there'll be time for Q&A. The presentation will cover three things. First half, 25 results, and the performance drivers, our financials in more detail, and our strategy analysis. Then we'll do Q&A. Let's move to slide four in the pack. The macro conditions we saw in the first half of 25 did not reflect our assumptions, which affected our top line results, particularly late in Q2, as we outlined in our trading update of 18th of October. Nevertheless, we worked very hard and drove the business leaders we have well, meaning while results were behind where we expected, the business remains in very good shape. We also saw the strategic pivots we've made in the last three years to focus on B2B, to grow globally and to launch a platform that provides our clients with a broader range of products and services, generate very encouraging growth and returns. We delivered net operating income of $111.2 million and an underlying EBITDA of $29 million. We continued to execute the fundamentals well, generated $17.1 million in underlying net cash from operations, with net cash held at $74.7 million at the end of the half. This is a bit lower than the prior period due to our active capital management strategy, which included a $3.3 million share buyback and $11.5 million debt repayment, which Selina will talk to later. We grew our NOI margin two basis points off the second half 24 to 60 basis points, which is flat on the first half 24, as that included one off escrow payments. Risk management remains a core strength, and the additional controls, along with continued vigilance, results in bad debts being less than $1 million. This is ahead of our estimate. More broadly, synergies realized and sound management of expenses meant overall underlying operating expenses were $82.1 million, down 1.4% versus the first half of 2020. Moving to slide five, this aspect of OFX doing the fundamentals well underpins our confidence that we can build a sustainable growth system, one that performs through the cycle. As evidence, although the last three years have seen some of the most unusual economic and political conditions driven by the global economy's emergence from the pandemic, high government stimulus almost everywhere driving inflation and a series of interest rate rises, we have delivered a three-year CAGR in NOI of 17.4%, and a three-year CAGR of underlying EBITDA of 12.7%, even as we've grown our investment in intangibles, in employees, and in more SaaS-enabled technologies than ever before. Whilst these investments have been thoughtfully deployed over that period, the rewards, faster growth with returns, are now beginning to emerge. Furthermore, as Selina will touch on later, our value proposition generates price elasticity, and we have seen the benefits of the countless pricing tests we've performed over the last three years, growing NOI margin 14 basis points. This belief that a strong value proposition can sustain a fair price has always been in the DNA of OFX, but it's now supported by well-developed analytics and technology. Finally, fine engagement, as measured by transactions per active client in the last 12 months, continues to grow at a good rate, And that is impressive considering the real growth will come as clients are given the choice to select more products to satisfy more of their needs. Kinol, a very healthy company. Turning to slide six, I'll share more detail on our main segment performance and their drivers in a moment. But first, a recap on what drove our overall top line performance versus our expectation as we outlined at the time of the trading update. The economic assumptions we used to build our FY25 outlook, as shared in the FY24 results in May, did occur, although later in the first half than we anticipated. The single biggest difference between what we assumed and what we saw in the first half was the interest rate easing cycle starting later in the US and not starting at all in Australia. Easing did start in Canada and the UK as well as Europe. slower than anticipated easing in the U.S. meant a stronger U.S. dollar against both the Aussie and the CAD, two of our larger corridors, which slowed the rebound in corporate confidence that we were expecting. The U.S. dollar strength, combined with less optimistic views of the recovery in several economies, also meant that some of our larger corporate clients deferred higher value transactions, which in turn affected overall average transaction values, or ATVs, in those markets. As we shared in our training update, this was most acutely felt in September and parts of August. In September, we saw corporate ATVs decline 13.5% globally. Over the first half, corporate ATVs were down 9.4% in Canada and 19.5% in the UK as clients acted cautiously. This was very unusual. We also saw relatively benign markets, little volatility, which, along with more subdued consumer confidence, meant consumer activity, although it did grow, versus second half 24, meant lower consumer activity, although it did grow versus second half 24. Against those assumptions, the levers we controlled did perform in line or better than expectations. We saw healthy growth coming from the new corporate clients we acquired in fiscal year 24, We continue to execute on our margin improvements, adding two basis points versus second half 24 to our NOI margin. And the further controls we put in place to protect us from fraud, especially in North America, are working well, keeping bad debts below expectations. As we exited the first half, we saw positive momentum return, with October revenue up 14% versus September, and with ATVs returning to the levels we expected. You can see from the arrows on the right-hand side how we see our key assumptions panning out over the second half of 2025, all in line or improving. Moving to slide seven, we saw mixed outcomes in our corporate segment. The US growing at just under 25% and Australia at just over 9%. Europe continuing to grow very well off a small base at over 77%, while Canada and the As a group, we grew revenue 3.5%, supported by transactions being up just over 5%, and transactions for active client in the last 12 months up 11%, while we continue to see healthy new revenue growth up 15%. In sampling our clients in the UK and Canada, we see the following. Small number of larger clients did fewer of the high-value transactions we ordinarily see, but transactions are steady overall. Smaller clients are actually transacting more with ATV growth of over 6.5% versus the first half of 2024. We're not seeing any kind of alarming decline in active clients. Corporate active clients did decline slightly in the first half, driven by the factors affecting their economic outlook, as I explained, and therefore the FX means. As the right-hand side of the page shows, we grew revenue by 3.5%, which is below our expectations but against a difficult backdrop. We also continue to grow our penetration of forward revenue as a proportion of all revenues by highlighting to our clients the benefits of reducing the risk of exposure to currency volatility on their finances. We do this through our team of over 150 commercial professionals worldwide. Putting together such a strong and high-performing team globally is very hard and very proud for of the new client platform. Moving to our high-value consumer segment on slide eight, we delivered $34.5 million of revenue, down 3.6% on prior corresponding period, but up 5.9% versus the second half of 24. Volatility was lower than in prior years, which impacted transaction volumes. And encouragingly, we did see a slight improvement versus the second half in higher-value wealth and property transactions. pushing ATVs overall slightly up on prior corresponding periods. Naturally, having redirected all of our marketing spend to be focused on the corporate segment, part of the revenue decline is due to a small drop in active clients, but we nevertheless retain and support a valuable consumer segment, which we continue to expect to grow at low single digits through the cycle. Moving to our enterprise segment on slide nine, it's excellent to see the revenue growth at just under 13% versus second half 24, and the three-year revenue CAGR of over 24%, given the investment and hard work our teams have put in. We've learned a great deal here, particularly how to win and activate smaller clients, and it's terrific to see traction building, especially amongst recent wins. The pivot to focus on smaller opportunities and to activate them quickly is working. The ATP launch at the US Open in August was terrific. We've seen strong growth from our established clients too. They're announced. 20 active enterprise clients, and the more that figure grows, especially regionally, the more steadily we will grow revenue from enterprise. The pipeline is healthy, seven prospects added during the half, taking the total to 84 in the pipeline. Post-close, we have extended our relationships with both Link and WiseTech. As we've said previously, this segment will grow its contribution to OFX over time, generating EBITDA-accretive returns. So in all, good execution. And whilst the top line growth was disappointing, the business remains in very good shape and the encouraging signs from the pivot give us great conviction in the future. And I'll discuss the early signs we're seeing from a new client platform in more detail later. But first, let me hand to Selina who will walk us through the financials.

Thank you, Skander. Moving to slide 11, we have had steady revenue in a challenging macro environment. Fee and trading income was down just 0.1%, so flat on the first half 24. As we outlined in our trading update, we had a good start to the half, but soft trading in the second quarter 25. September was the lowest month in 17 months, but pleasingly we've seen a better performance in October. As Skanda mentioned, this was up 14% on September and higher than the first half monthly average. As you'll see in the regional breakdown, APAC was up 1%, EMEA up 1%, and North America up 3%. This was offset by Treasury revenue of $6.2 million, being down $1.4 million from the first half of 2024, as part of the firm's Treasury revenue was included in the North American number post-migration. Given the macro backdrop, it is pleasing to see corporate revenue growth at 3.5% and enterprise growth at 6%, although these were offset by the softer consumer segment down 3.6%. Net operating income of $111.2 million was down 3.5%. If you exclude the 3.7 million escrow that was included in the first half 24 NOI, it was down just 0.2%. We've continued to work on margins, up two basis points on the second half 24 and controlled our costs well with operating expenses of 82.1 million, down 1.4% on the first half of 24. This resulted in an underlying EBITDA of 29 million and an EBITDA margin of 26.1%. This is expected to be 28%. With the investment in our platform and most of our entities in Australia, we are allowed to claim R&D tax benefits. Prior year benefits of $2.4 million generated a tax rate of 11.9%. As we stated, the full year, we expect the future tax rate to be between 21% and 24%. This will be dependent on R&D spend and future rebates. Statutory net profit after tax is $10.75. down 32.3%. This includes a 2.2 million fair value loss on the contingent consideration for Patreon. So this is a non-cash item and varies with the share price, which as of 30 September was $2.16. The contingent consideration vests in June of 2026. We have a strong balance sheet and our net cash held balance is 74.7 million. In the first half, we continue to execute our active capital management strategy a 3.3 million share buyback and 11.5 million debt repayment. Moving to slide 12, we continue to see margin expansion with our first half margins at 60 basis points up from 58 basis points to the first half 24x escrow. You can see for the margin walk we increased pricing in the book by two basis points, which offset the 3.7 million escrow amount that's booked as other income in the first half 24. You may remember in First quarter of 24, we had a handful of traders leave the firm of business. We had negotiated an escrow amount from a purchase agreement that allowed us to take short-term margin action in first half 24, which reduced NOI but was offset by the escrow amount. It is pleasing to see this revert to prior levels following the pricing actions taken in half. We continue to work our cash balances to generate interest income. We generated 4.4 million of interest income in the first half 25, half of 24 of $4.4 million. The new client platform will provide our clients with the wallet functionality, which will increase cash we are holding on behalf of clients and our ability to generate interest income in a falling interest rate environment. We continue to work on the pricing actions to drive improvements. We have dynamic pricing across all regions and have established pricing councils and reviews to ensure we continue to test price elasticity. We are pleased with our growth in forwards as it not only protects the FX risk for clients, but also allows us to price at this risk. We have launched our new client platform and have a number of new income streams, being subscriptions, interchange and merchant fees. As Scanda will take you through, we are looking to migrate our Australian corporate customers and are excited for the use cases the new platform solves for, but also to build our non-FX revenue streams. We will update you at the full year result to how this is progressing. Moving to slide 13, our underlying operating expenses were $82.1 million, down 1.4% on the first half of 2025 due to our group productivity programs delivering synergies and tight cost controls. Employee expenses were down 1.7% on the first half of 2024 as the firmer integration resulted in a reduction of 20 FTE through productivity gains. Commercial expenses of $9.3 million were up on the second half of 2024 but down on the first half of a 24 by 4.1%. We tend to have higher promotional expenses in the first half of the second. This is when we build a lot of our marketing collateral. We thoughtfully deploy promotional spend in the first half 25, which despite being down on the first half 24, there would be to be new revenue growth of 8.9%. And we've also launched our new OFX 2.0 marketing collateral in the Australian market. As a result, we have seen Australian website traffic increase 13%. Scandal will take you through our rollout programs for other countries later. Bad and doubtful debts are down 41.7% and are less than 0.6% of revenue, below the expected run rate of 1%, due to further process improvements and controls being implemented late in the second half of 2024 and in the first half of 2025. While this is great to see, we must always remain vigilant. In May, we guided for intangible investments for the year to be $18 million, with 40% of that dedicated to product investments. But we've also said that if we saw good returns on a product spend, we may go further. We launched the new client platform for new Australian corporate clients in June and began migration of existing Australian clients in November. Scanda will take you through our progress, which we're really pleased with. In the first half of 25, we spent $10 million on intangible investments. To accelerate the Canadian and the UK launch for new clients, we're going to spend $9 million in the second half of 25, so $19 million for the year. and $1 million higher than the original guidance. Turning to slide 14, we have a strong balance sheet. A net cash held position is $74.7 million, which is both cash held for own use and deposits due from financial institutions. We hold some of this cash as collateral for our trading lines and bank guarantees. Collateral and bank guarantees were $28.8 million, up from $19.7 million at the end of fiscal year 24. This increase is due to the additional collateral we are required to hold for our wallets on the new client platform. The $9 million additional collateral and timing of operational cash flows resulted in the next cash available balance of $45.9 million, which is down $22.3 million at the end of fiscal year 2024. Our $29 million of underlying EBITDA usually converts into more than 80% of cash flows from operating activities. Our cash conversion rate this half was lower than normal at 59%, generating 17.1 million of underlying cash flows from operating activities. Reduction in conversion rate was due to timing of tax payments and growth in our customer forwardable for revenues on booking of the forward, but cash has only received a maturity. To the time of these items, we're expecting a strong cash conversion rate in the second half of 25. We have continued our debt repayments $5 million repaid, and our loan balance from the acquisition of Firma was $30.7 million at the period end. Due to our strong cash balances and our net debt position is positive, we are on track to repay the debt facility by the end of fiscal year 26, subject to no other value-accrued growth opportunities emerging which require funding. Our shareback program remains active. In the first half of 25, we deployed $3.3 million of capital, 1.6 million shares. Buying back shares is a part of our active capital management strategy, which returns value to shareholders while also providing capital flexibility to execute on growth investment. Activity will resume following the release of our results. I will now hand back to Scott to take us through the strategy and outlook.

Thank you, Celina, for that excellent description of our financial results and what drives it. We have never felt more energised or confident in our strategies. But let's expand on the data points on slide 16 that support this conviction. At the heart of any sustainable growth company is growth in active clients. It's a very good measure of a company's ability to out-compete, to generate future cash flows and build momentum. Our challenge in OFX 1.0 was in driving a strong point of difference to our target prospect, where we had, in effect, a single product supported by a very good digital and human service model. We provided better pricing, along with a very good client experience, and we were very well trusted. But those alone were not enough to unlock substantial client growth. A strategic pivot to B2B, and particularly in our corporate segment, meant that we dug deeper into what clients faced in their businesses every day, and ways in which we could help. We were building out a more comprehensive offering, including a wallet with multi-currency accounts and cards in response to that, But the acquisition of Patreon taught us there was a bigger pain point in spend management across both domestic and cross-border payments that was not well addressed or served. Further, Prospect saw us as a very credible provider of these solutions. June, around a year after acquiring Patreon, we launched our new client platform, rebranding the Patreon platform as it was and gradually The response has been excellent. Already, including the former patron clients, the new client platform now supports over 1,000 clients through 30th of September, up over 100% versus prior corresponding periods. And this is on the back of a soft launch. Since then, we've added many features, which I'll turn to in a moment. It's working very well. The slide shows you three examples of clients that we've onboarded since June and their usage. The first client, software developer, actually left OFX back in 2015 because whilst they loved our service, we couldn't provide the accounts and cards they wanted. Since bringing them home, they have two multi-currency accounts, four cards, and have already moved around three million in transfers. Based on their behavior so far, we expect them to grow with us with more of their spend being moved across, including for things like payroll. The second client was a prospect for over four years. Our sales team kept in touch, but the prospect wasn't interested enough in our pure FX product, so we could never get them to try us. When we acquired Patreon, we got in touch with them to explain the new platform and how it could help. Within a week, they'd agreed to move and have already onboarded 120 users, each paying $15 per month as a subscription, four multi-currency wallets, and have issued over 98 cards. They're absolutely delighted at the ease of the platform, control they have, and the simplicity with which it all works. And what's extraordinary is they haven't even started FX with us. The third client is a clean tech provider who knew of us but didn't consider us because we couldn't meet their needs for multi-currency accounts and cards. When they heard we had acquired Patreon, they approached us, and we onboarded them, and so far we've already seen them grow to 12 users, 8 wallets, 28 active cards, and over a million of FX volumes. This is just a small sample of new clients we can win with our expanded value proposition. And what is even more exciting is the genuine engagement we see. Right now, we don't offer our risk products or limit orders on the new platform, but they're coming soon. Those products distinguish us, especially in the B2B space, from most of the new entrants and certainly from the banks. And OFX's track record of delivering simple risk management will be a substantial tailwind. Moving to slide 17, not only are we winning clients we could not previously, but we are seeing that clients onboarder on the new client platform are using a broader range of products, thereby generating more revenue and creating a stickier relationship. Firstly, although the Patreon platform was good, naturally it was not yet fully developed. We've been busy adding attractive features and services as well as adding stronger security and scale. Our digital onboarding that we had deployed in OFX is now live on the NCP, generating excellent conversion rates for prospects to clients. We've adapted our ways of working, particularly in technology and product, and have tripled the number of deployments per week. We've also launched our new partnership with Visa. There are so many more features, products, and services coming that we firmly believe will add further to that excellent client experience. The platform is clearly resonating, easy to use, and valuable. As a result, through to the end of September, of all the revenue we generated from new clients onboarded onto the new client platform since June, we've seen approximately 50% of that revenue come from non-FX products and services. And this is despite, as I mentioned previously, us not having a full new value proposition in market. That non-FX revenue is all incremental and at higher margins. At a client level, around 40% of all new clients have already taken a new product beyond FX. What excites us about the nature of these products is that they tend to grow in value to the client and to OFX over time. For example, clients who add cards tend to build their usage over time. Around one in five clients have already activated at least one card. And in fact, all the clients who have cards, on average, they have around seven per client. Each card generates revenue through interchange revenue, whilst accounts track revenue through funding fees, interest income and FX transfer margin. And this is why our whole team and board have never felt as optimistic to build revenue over time at a faster rate through more products, more clients and more engaged clients. And as that grows, it reduces our exposure to macro. Moving to slide 18, naturally, we monitor competition. We want to understand several things. Firstly, we want to see whether our products and services are more attractive to our prospects and clients. Secondly, we want to see whether our products and services are getting used in the same way or differently, so that we can build out our roadmap to remain differentiated as well as relevant to our target client. It's not always straightforward to get clear, unambiguous data points from competition. Many are private and don't publish detailed or timely data. Of the public competitors, some put but not all. Some report over different time periods and some use different definitions or compete in different geographies. We have heard some investors express concerns that we're being out-competed. This page shows three public competitors and their relative performance in as comparable a way as we could present it. These are all large, mature businesses serving B2B. Competitor A's result, the equivalent of our second quarter, shows that in FX revenue, they shrunk over the period by 3% versus PCP. This compares roughly with our corporate portfolio growing 3.5% over first half versus PCP. In fact, our 2Q revenue was up 2.1% versus PCP. They grew their non-FX revenue by nearly 40% over the same period versus PCP, and interest income by 13%. Competitive B's results reflect the fact that they focused largely on FX, target larger clients than competitor A. Their FX revenue for the calendar year 2023 was flat versus PCP, but they grew their interest income nine times over the period. Competitor C generated 9% FX revenue growth for the equivalent of our Q1 versus PCP. We generated just under 5% over the same period. The same trend on non-FX growth can be observed, with non-FX revenue growth growing at roughly seven times FX revenue growth. These data points do not suggest to us that we've been out-competed in FX, especially when we overlay new revenue growth and transaction growth. But it further highlights the opportunity to grow revenue from non-FX, and we remain vigilant to competitors and competitive offerings, but very confident in the execution we have in the path we see. A real opportunity to accelerate growth in the short and medium term is to provide our existing clients these products and services on our new client platform. As we know, many of them will be taking this product from new entrants, as we've seen, or banks. Moving to slide 19, this is an update of where we are so far on that journey. We acquired Patreon in May 2023 and began the process of uplifting and rebranding the platform almost immediately. By June 2024, we had a prototype we felt was robust enough to begin to offer to new prospects and launched it under the OFX brand. We had received several requests from existing OFX clients for the new service and we were onboarding them client by client as we developed a robust, systematic client migration program. That migration program commenced in October when we wrote to the first tranche of existing Australian corporate clients and we've already seen a positive response with clients asking to engage through webinars and product demonstrations. The first group was migrated from November the 9th And we will migrate further tranches before Christmas and more in Q4. In parallel, we continue to improve and enhance the platform to ensure its OFX standard. And we will add our risk products over the course of fiscal year 25 so that every corporate client can be seen on the new client platform and get the same or better than they have been on the existing platform. And of course, we've already done a lot of planning and thinking about our global rollout too. selected Canada and then the UK as our first two markets, based on our ability to launch well, the competitive dynamics, and our desire to scale quickly. Again, it will be new prospects first, followed by existing clients. We were so encouraged by early indicators that we saw from the new Australian corporate clients that we allocated an incremental $1 million in intangible investment this year, as Selena highlighted earlier, to accelerate this global rollout. We are well underway for planning that rollout to the other global markets, and we'll update you at the full year 25 results in May on what we plan to do, when, and how. Moving to slide 20, as we said alongside our trading update, we have revised our fiscal year 25 view for NOI. We're stronger in the second half than the first half, and on PCP to deliver a 28% EBITDA margin for But we did not revise our medium-term view because we first want to assess the performance from existing Australian clients on the new client platform, which will give us a much better feel for the likely level of take-up in our other markets. We will therefore update that with our fiscal year 25 results in May. We do remain committed to our long-term outlook of more than 15% NOI growth at EBITDA margins of more than 30%. built our strategy to take advantage of the reputation we have with clients for being great value, reliable and secure. And as I've shown with our competitive results, non-FX revenue growth can and does happen despite macro circumstances. That gives us so much more conviction than before. Before I hand back to Ashley, I want to reiterate that both the management and the board are very confident in the strategy. The execution remains good and we're determined to combine these into a great outcome for investors. Thank you, and I'll now pass back to Ashley to handle Q&A.

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. Your first question comes from Laftani Sotiru with MST Financial. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Can I just first start off with a point of clarification? On slide 24, I can see that you now include online seller within corporate, but can I just clarify, in the footnote for corporate, it says there's about 700, it implies there's about 700 clients on the new client platform, but Scanda, you mentioned there's 1,000 on the new client platform in your comments. Is that up until today, or can you just talk us through Is it 700 or is it 1,000 on the new client platform? And within the turnover stats that we're looking at on that page, the 700 or 1,000 clients that are on the new client platform, are there stats included in that turnover number?

Thank you. Okay. If it's okay, I'll take that one. A thousand clients have access to the new platform. Of those thousand, 700 are active. Those 700 active clients, as we footnoted, are not included in the 32.7 thousand corporate active clients. So when you include that, that number becomes 33.4. Also, turnover on this slide does not include the So it's clients from that client platform. So if you added that, it would become, as we've noted, 11.9. Is that helpful?

I got it. And the expectations going forward, I imagine, would we, as a new client platform grows, would that be bundled into the corporate stats or what's the expectation? So will it just be one corporate number, which is online seller, new client platform, and your, I guess, legacy clients? or traditional corporate?

Yes, absolutely. So it will all be put in together. We're just in this phase at the moment where as we're migrating and the revenue on non-FX is starting to pick up, this particular page is built for kind of FX revenue type dimensions being active clients, transactions, ATV, that sort of thing. When you start to add in subscriptions, and other types of revenue streams, we will need to also give you updated metrics on how we are looking at that portfolio and we'll do that at the full year as well.

Got it. And just moving to my next question, with the transfer of the back book for the Australian clients and you flagged by first quarter 26, does that mean ultimately every client you have in Australia will be on the new client platform? Or will you run... dual platforms for those that are unwilling. And if you're not going to run dual platforms, what are you factoring in for potential leakage from those that may not like the friction of transferring?

Excellent. Maybe I'll take that one. Yes, the plan is things like their beneficiaries are migrated we can assist them with logons digitally it can all be done seamlessly the new client platform has to have all the same facilities that the existing platform has so if the client just wants to do an FX transfer they can do that they don't have to take up all the extra features and benefits but obviously that's the reason why we are moving thoughtfully through the migration program and not just putting it all in one go. And each cohort sort of teaches us some things, as well as the existing clients we've already moved across, as well as others who've asked about it, in terms of what they value, how they want to do it, and how we can assist those clients to make it as frictionless as possible. But absolutely, it'll be one platform.

Got it. And so when you flagged second half, FY25 for UK, Canada, is that when the investment starts or when the rollout starts?

So UK, Canada, the investment's already started. That'll be in the fiscal year 25 number, the intangible, that million. That supports the new clients to be launched in Canada in March and UK in July. But what we're also working on is whether there's an accelerated migration But by the time we get to May of next year, we will have a finalized plan, which we'll share with you, which covers the rest of the markets and all migration.

Can I just push one more question? You talked to the trading environment being up 14% in October versus, I'm not sure, was it September or the September quarter? Yes. Can you just talk to a little bit around possibly the U.S. election and since the U.S. election, and I know it's only been weeks into November, but any commentary around how November's tracking so far?

Sure, so that up 14% was versus September, so October revenue up 14% versus September. November is in line with October. So yes, the US election, we've seen continued strength and engagement from clients. We haven't seen a major spike, but we've certainly seen good continued engagement.

Alright, great. Thank you.

Your next question comes from Owen Humphreys with Canaccord. Please go ahead.

Just a quick question around capital management, given where the share price is, given where your balance sheet is, given where the free cash flow is expected to be, can you just talk through some of the capital management initiatives you guys are pushing through for the next 12 months? And is M&A still a part of your strategy?

Yep. So a couple of things on capital management. Obviously, share buyback is active and we'll continue to deploy funds there. continue to pay back the debt as well. We do generate a lot of cash. The other nice thing is with the debt that we have paid back, we do have some debt capacity. So if an M&A acquisition came along, and we're always looking, but we always make sure that we're looking for the right asset at the right price, and we make sure that we pay the right price. So if you look at the moment, with current share price where it is, you're probably not going to use script to do an M&A acquisition. But you do have some debt capacity. Two times EBITDA in the last 12 months gives you at least a capacity of $92 million that you could do an acquisition with if you found one.

You just noticed before around the volumes in the peer set, kind of like for like, holding relative to flat. I know there have been some pricing initiatives by some of your peers. Have you kind of seen any impact? Have you guys had to react or are you guys set fast in your pricing initiatives?

So, in fact, what we see on transactions is they're actually up. So, to the extent that there have been, I think it's only one competitor that's actually dropped price, as far as I'm aware. And my understanding is their FX revenues kind of flat or down. So we haven't seen that. Plus, I would say that particular competitor is targeting a much smaller target client than we are. More what we see in the kind of mid-size, we haven't seen any kind of pricing pressure from competition.

Good one. Thanks, guys.

Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We'll now pause for a short moment to allow questions to be registered. There are no further questions at this time. I'll now hand back to Mr. Malcolm for closing remarks.

Okay, thank you, Ashley, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call. Look forward to catching up with you in the next week and picking up any other questions that you may have. Thanks very much.